


Snowballs in Hell

by FluffMeister (Frosty)



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Attempt at Humor, Battlefield, F/F, Gen, Ice Powers, Multi, Time War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:21:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 41,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2811839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frosty/pseuds/FluffMeister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna is completing her training to join the army of Arendelle. With a war lurking in the corner, she'll soon find herself serving under the General Elsa Arendelle's command.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It goes without saying I do not own Frozen.

**Snowballs in Hell**

**By FluffMeister**

**  
**

**Part 1**

 

She should be dead.

Maybe she was, after all no one could really tell what death was like. Maybe she was dying, because she was seeing the white light alright.

The smallest amount of oxygen sipped into her lungs triggering a wave of pain into her whole body. The world slowly came in focus and she was regaining her bearings. Blood was pulsing against her eardrums, combined with the awful high pitch ringing in her ears, it was like listening to the worst tune ever.

She could feel her chest moving up and down quickly yet oxygen never really filled her lungs if the burning in her chest was anything to go by. There was an irony taste in her mouth, something hot and slimy.

Blood and saliva.

Great.

She blinked several times. The white light turned grey and she could see thick dusty particles raining on her. She wasn’t moving, that she was certain of, yet her head was spinning giving her a sick sense of vertigo.

Welcome nausea.

She should be dead.

In fact she’d be dead right now if this wasn’t a training exercise.

If they had been on the field, that land mine would have turned her into fleshy rain. It _was_ training though, so the blast had ‘only’ blinded her, knocked the wind out of her and propelled her several feet in the air. In the end the most painful thing was the landing. Gravity was a bitch.

During training, mistakes were sanctioned by bruises, the occasional broken bone or concussion…

“Anna! You fucking spaz! It was your _other_ left!”

… and the ire of her team mate.

“Back off, Al!” the familiar voice sounded muffled. Kristoff’s face appeared from above, worry distorting his features. “Red, are you alright?”

“Ugh…” was the most coherent word she could utter.

As sensations started to come back into her limbs she brought her left hand to the side of her head, feeling something warm and stick immediately coating her palm. Well, now she knew why she felt dizzy.

“Red?”

“’m fine,” she muttered and gritted her teeth when she forced herself into a sitting position, her body ached all over.

Kristoff’s worry dissolved into a grin. He offered his hand, she took it and let him pulled her onto her feet.

“Thanks,” she shook her head a bit and regretted it immediately.

“That was one beautiful flight,” Kristoff mocked her, she glowered at him but was saved from finding a response when she saw his head jerked forward. “Ouch,” she smirked when he started rubbing the back of his blond thick hair. “Hey, just because I have a thick skull doesn’t mean you can hit me all the time,” he complained to the tall muscular man standing next to him.

“Thank you Sven,” Anna grinned at her tall friend. The tall man simply nodded with a smirk.

“Don’t you know your left from your right?!” Aladdin their team leader came to their level screaming.

“I'm fine, thanks for asking, Aladdin” Anna muttered with annoyance.

“Like I cared. We failed again, thanks to you… again!”

Aladdin was as tall as she was which means he was smaller than Kristoff and looked like a dwarf next to Sven. He had a boyish face, and brown eyes able to make you believe that he was trust worthy. The charm however was broken as soon as he opened his mouth. “I can’t believe I have someone as useless as you on my team!” he had a thick Persian accent, and when he was upset like right now he’d swear in his native tongue.

Anna spat blood on the floor, wishing she could have some water to wash the irony taste away.

“Hey, Spaz, look at me,” Aladdin addressed to Anna in a voice that clearly meant he thought she was mentally slow. “This is right,” he waved his right hand up. “This is left,” he switched his grip on his weapon to wave his other hand. “Right… left… do you think that pea-sized brain of yours can register that?”

“Again, back off,” Kristoff put himself between Anna and his team leader, glaring at the shorter man. “If I have to say it again it won’t be with my words.”

“I'm the leader right now, so suck it up, big guy,” Aladdin smirked condescendingly. “I'm not getting benched because of her, so tell your girlfriend to get it right this time.”

They watched him walking away, Kristoff restraining himself from shooting at him. Sven grunted. “Yeah, you said it,” Kristoff agreed then turned his attention back to Anna. “Come on, let’s patch you up before we go for another round.”

Anna picked up her weapon from the ground and opened the walk back to the entrance of the training arena.

“You were kind of a spaz on that one,” Kristoff teased.

“Oh, blow me Blondie,” she replied with a roll of her eyes.

“That land mine beat me to it,” he countered, his chuckle was short-lived though. “Ouch! Damn it, Sven!” once again he rubbed the back of his head.

“Serves you well,” Anna declared with a smirk, the presence of her two best friends making her failure easier to bear.

“One of these days I'm going to end up with damages,” Kristoff pouted.

A snort of laughter erupted from Sven. “Sven is right,” Anna went on. “You needn’t worry, there is very little if anything to damage up there,” she laughed.

“Ah, ah, aren’t you two a riot,” Kristoff replied with a flat voice.

The training arena was one acre of adjustable land that recreated the various landscapes outside of the kingdom of Arendelle. Ruins of building, deep underground tunnels, cracked and unsteady floors, buildings ready to collapse; vast deserts with obstacles; in essence the outside world was like the base, only a decaying version.

The layouts of the arena changed every new attempt at an exercise, because on the field, you never stayed in one place long enough to memorize its layouts. Therefore in training they never evolved in the same layout twice.

The only constant was the hard ice and thick snow covering every surface. The arena had its own weather simulator, so they had trained in blizzard condition, snow storms, regular snow fall, hails, and cold rain. Why? The answer was easy enough, because the world outside of the base was plunged into an eternal winter, had been for as long as Anna could remember.

That wintery weather had been one of the hardest parts for Anna. Sure, learning how to move quickly and swiftly while wearing suit that was the equivalent of her own weight had been hard. It had been physically excruciating, but with time she had gotten used to it. And yeah, learning how to be accurate with the different weapons had been hard because, well she was clumsy, but she had become good at it especially with bows. Of course the training in itself was intense, but she had gotten used to daily injuries.

The cold though? She still couldn’t stand it. She had spent the past six months, crawling, running, falling into snow and ice, and still she hated it.

It was like an angry wild animal that could never be tamed, always gnawing through the protective layers of your suit and gloves, biting fiercely at your skin.

She blamed her aversion for cold weather on Arendelle. The kingdom’s weather simulator was only recreating three seasons out of four, spring, summer and autumn. The weather was regulated not just for the comfort of its inhabitant but first and foremost to ensure the best conditions to cultivate the various fields. As not so many things grew in harsh winter conditions there was no real point to have three to four months of unfavourable weather.

Of course, some things defied nature laws and learnt to grow out of rock hard soil and cold, so there were a handful of greenhouses specifically designed for winter farming – only kamikazes worked in those, and if Anna was a lot of things, a kamikaze she was not.

Anna had worked on the farming fields before signing up for the army when she was of age. She missed the warmth of the sun – artificial or not – against her skin during her day of labour, she missed the smell of grass and freshly turned earth. The only reminder that those care-free days had been real were the callosities on her hands, the training had preserved them.

What she wouldn’t give now to be on those fields. There was something intrinsically good about cultivating earth and attending to whatever gifts she was willing to give. There was a beauty in farming, that simple and primal cycle of life. Anna liked the fact that she instantly knew the positive impact of her actions: growing life to maintain life, simple.

Six months of training had only taught her how to destroy, maim and kill. There was hardly anything positive that could come from any of those actions.

A burning sensation on her left temple brought her out of her contemplation. “Oy! Easy!” she winced, moving her head to the side to avoid Kristoff’s rough healing touch.

“Oh come on, with your high injuries per day ratio you should be used to the sting by now,” the blond man pointed out with a smirk.

“I'm used to the sting, it’s your _delicate_ touch I have a problem with,” she said through her teeth.

“You’re being a baby,” he shrugged.

They were in the head quarters on the arena. It was a hermetic room with no windows, furnished with the strict minimum, a health caisson, a work surface covered with tools and spare pieces of every kind, four chairs, two bookshelves fixed against one wall and a round table made of steel with an obsidian shade in the middle.

Behind the walls the layouts of the arena were shifting with a rumble. The light in the room flickered to red to warn them that the new arena was ready.

“I can’t wait for you to get injured to I can show you the difference between dabbing a wound with ointment and _poking_ at it!” Anna muttered petulantly.

“I’m just being thorough,” he said unceremoniously pushing the cotton ball against her flesh again.

“Ouch! I swear Kristoff…” she didn’t get the chance to finish her threat as Aladdin stepped in.

“Cut it out you two and hurry up, we only have ten minutes to come up with a new plan!”

Kristoff finished patching her up quickly and they joined Sven and Aladdin around the table.

A hologram of the new arena’s blueprints was projected on the dark metal surface. Buildings, streets and every solid object was defined with green lines, a blue dot indicated them the flag they had to get and secure. Red shapes gave them indication of the threats they’d encountered, sentinels, laser blasts, bombs, land mines, debilitating electric impulses and so on.

The exercise was easy. They had to secure a flag in their possession, bring it back to a safe point and hold position for three minutes. In order to validate that exercise they had to complete it in forty minutes flat or less.

The exercise had been the same for the past six months, but the required execution time diminished as the obstacles and traps multiplied.

At first, the flag had been in plain sight and the only thing keeping them from it were snowy mounts, and low walls to hide from eventual incoming attacks.

Then the layout started to be more intricate and the flag was nowhere to be seen. Now, the arena was just a giant maze above and under ground level with booby traps every five feet or so.

Every day one of them was designated as the leader. Today, it was Aladdin. Their team had been formed a week prior and they had yet to manage to get any traction between them.

Even though Anna, Sven and Kristoff got along like peas in a pod, they still had to learn how to move as one while on the field. As for Aladdin, it wasn’t just that he was an outsider in their group, it was also about him being a jerk when he took a time off from being a condescending prick which he was ninety per cent of the time.

After taking note of the blueprint, Aladdin slid his fingers across the table. The blueprints shifted to a three dimensional holographic representation of the arena. He zoomed in on buildings or areas as he pleased.

He decided that they’d have to progress via the rooftops, the ground being covered with mines for the first two hundred feet. Then they were to use a zip-line to get back to ground level. Once on the ground they would progress carefully until they reached the building with the flag. That was the easiest part of the plan. It all got trickier when it came to find a way to the safe point.

Aladdin’s plan was as good as one can be in ten minutes. The hologram disappeared when they were out of time so they formed a line in front of the door giving them access to the arena.

Aladdin turned around and looked directly at Anna. “Hey, Spaz, remember, right and left,” he alternatively waved the appropriate hand.

She didn’t bother with words and simply flicked the bird at him.

The young Persian sniggered with a wink and faced the door again. He pushed the red button next to it, indicating that they were ready. Three loud and deafening sirens resounded as a countdown, then the door slid open.

They immediately started to run, following a path Aladdin had defined, to reach the building standing ten feet onto their right. They had to reach the roof from inside. Of course the stairs were half destroyed to they were climbing through holes in the ceilings of each floor.

It took them five minutes to climb the seven floors up. They were jumping from one roof to another when the first itch occurred.

The roof of the next building was more precarious than it appeared because by the time Anna jumped on it, she didn’t have time to complete her roll on the floor to soften her landing as the concrete under her just crumbled down taking her along for a fall.

She hit the ground five floors below flat on her back. The wind flew out of her lungs in one go and she didn’t get the strength to inhale again for ten seconds.

“ _Spaz!_ ” the annoyed voice of Aladdin came in her earpiece. “ _Bloody hell!_ ”

She was about to answer when she heard the distinct high pitch sound of a sentinel flying in her direction. She shook herself out of her shock, rolled over quickly oriented herself and scurried away to the nearest cover, in this case a broken staircase.

Sentinels were nasty things. They were small and oblong, shooting laser blasts that could pulverize their target. If Anna was protected by her suit, and the sentinel was programmed to only hurt and not kill, the damages would be extensive if she was hit.

She held her breath, grabbed one of the WeapGens attached to her belt. Weapons Generators or WeapGens wear thick tubes made of steel and electronically wired that could generate the weapon of her choice. All she had to do was to press her fingers in the combination she had chosen and programmed on her device.

She applied the required pressure around the device to generate her bow. She blocked out the angry rant of Aladdin in her ear, raising her bow, she opened her left hand, an arrow made of ice but hard as steel slowly came out of the small ice generator integrated on her wrist band.

She waited for the sentinel to come in her field of vision and released the arrow. It flew with lightening speed straight to the flying device’s canon destroying it.

The sentinel exploded and she knew that the other two sentinels were around – for sentinels always moved by three – and were now aware of her presence now as well.

Right on cue the two sentinels left of the trio came to her location. Anna reacted quickly shooting one arrow after the other hitting her targets quickly.

She waited a couple of seconds making sure no other immediate threat was coming her way and then focused on her leader’s voice again.

“ _Spaz, there are sentinels coming your way_ ,” Aladdin informed her.

“Yeah, I just took three down, little late for the heads up…” she muttered with a roll of her eyes. “I need a route so I can join you from down there,” she said sharply.

“ _The_ _zip line is three buildings ahead of you, you need to make a straight line in the streets on the east side_.”

“Roger that.”

She turned looked at the top of her left forearm. There was a tiny screen incrusted in the sleeve of her suit. It was called a HopeComs - Holographic, Operation and Communication System; it was a small but powerful device. It had every information on the mission, it kept track of their vitals, it kept them connected to one another, it projected holographic maps or recreation of their surroundings. Next to the WeapGen, this was the most important piece of equipment, without it survival rate was estimated to be less than 10 per cent.

She tapped the HopeComs quickly and a miniature version of the blueprints they had studies earlier appeared.

She quickly took note of her position and her destination. She moved inside the crumbling building to the door she needed to take.

“ _Oh by the way… You’re going to cross a nest_ ,” Aladdin informed her nonchalantly.

“Wait, what?” she almost stumbled at the crappy news delivered offhandedly. 

A nest… their idea of a plan was for her go through a spot where at least thirty sentinels would be.

“ _Sven and I are covering your from up top, Kristoff is on his way down to get you_.”

“That’s not a plan, that’s a suicide,” Anna pointed out calmly.

“ _We’re already three minutes behind, hurry up_ ,” he ignored her remark.

She growled and just positioned herself so she was near the east entrance of the building she was in. “On your go,” she informed them so they would have a few seconds to prepare their weapons. She dematerialised her bow to avoid impairing her running but didn’t put her WeapGen away.

“ _Go_ ,” the Persian boy breathed out.

Anna started running frantically. She was facing a street that had been barred with a grillage. There was a hole in the metal barrier at ground level.

 _Just big enough_ , she thought and right before reaching it she sunk on her knees and leaned back until her back touched the heels of her feet. In the speed of the momentum she slid through the hole then straightened up and got back to her feet.

“Approaching the nest,” she announced. She heard a grunt from Sven letting her know that he had heard her and was ready.

She quickly checked the map on her forearm again. The nest was right ahead. As soon as she’d be in the line of vision of sentinels they would attack.

She contracted her right hand around the WeapGen , generating a close range weapon. She needed something big and with enough range motion to make as many damages as possible. She had to give the first blow, that’d give her a three seconds advantage. In a nest seconds were precious.

A sword made of ice appeared in her right hand and she slew four sentinels guarding the nest in one swift movement. She ducked just in time to avoid an incoming laser blast.

She rolled on the floor for cover, then took note of the direction she had to take. Six hundred feet, that’s all she had to run.

 _Piece of cake._ She tried to mentally galvanize herself.

She peeked above her cover and noted that there were about three sentinels per ten feet, meaning there were much more she couldn’t see. Sentinels moved by pack of three, when in presence of a threat they relayed information, all it took was for one to tag her then all the others would know her position.

She was also aware that no matter what, time was against her. Every five minutes or so, sentinels were to report their position and the situation of the zone they were covering. The faster she moved through the sentinels the more she’d delay the transmission of said information.

She took a deep breath and run to her next cover destroying three sentinels, she heard a low grunt in her ear and instinctively ducked, then she heard an impact near her. She looked to her left just in time to see a sentinel blast into pieces.

“Shit,” she swore. “Thanks Sven,” she muttered.

The second she lost being surprised at the action led her to be surrounded. The sentinels whistled at the same time, the sound meant that they were about to fire. She swung her sword but missed two out of the three targets the closest to her.

“ _Duck_ ,” Aladdin’s jaded voice instructed.

She obeyed without hesitation and within the next two second two sentinels exploded. Lucky she was paying attention because she barely avoided the incoming arrow that missed the third sentinel. The fourth arrow touched its target.

“That was my head, Al!”

“ _Sorry about that_ ,” if anything he sounded a little bit amused.

She started running again, this time swing her sword at the sentinel coming her way, she saw a small wall and hid there.

Aladdin was a pain in the ass but he was a crack shooter, she gave him that – at least when he wasn’t nearly blasting her head off.

She saw that the three sentinels a few feet ahead of her were seemingly disoriented, trying to find her, so she took that opportunity to run toward them. She hit one, then another, she was about to destroy the third one when her sword was blasted into pieces.

“Crap!”

Lucky her, once again Aladdin’s accuracy saved her. “ _Keep running, Spaz!_ ”

She shook the remains of ice from her WeapGen and dashed forward. She slid and rolled on the floor to avoid blasts coming her way relying on Sven and Aladdin to keep up with her moves.

“ _Losing the eagle eyes_ ,” she heard Aladdin informed her.

She grabbed the second WeapGen on the left side of her belt and generated two gladius swords in each of her hands she swung them in a criss-cross motion pulverizing the incoming sentinel and then spread her arms wide to the side to hit the two other sentinels.

A hundred feet left and there were no sentinels in sight. She grinned, she had rocked that nest.

“ _I'm at your level_ ,” Kristoff’s voice echoed in her ear.

“Little late for the cavalry,” she boasted as she saw his figure appearing ahead.

The words had barely left her mouth that she heard a blast, losing her footing in the process. She saw Kristoff sending one of his small axes in the air, almost scalping her as it came pulverizing a sentinel she hadn’t seen on her left. Kristoff’s second axe swirled in the air and crashed another sentinel.

Anna was on the floor struggling to get back on her feet and grab her swords that had slid on the floor when she had landed.

The next three seconds were a display of cheer damn luck. She picked up one sword got up, at the last second picked movement from the corner of her eyes and swung her weapon just in time to terminate her assailant.

This time there were really no sentinels left.

Anna’s heart was pounding in her chest, adrenaline pumping wild in her veins. That was a close call.

Kristoff didn’t say anything but his glare was loud enough. They had had that conversation before about her getting so caught up in pride at some exploit that she’d let her guard down. ‘It’s all fun and game in training, on the field you’d be dead’ she could hear his reprimand echoing in her mind loud and clear.

She mentally kicked herself for failing that lesson again.

He flexed his hands activating the magnetic property of his gloves, the two small axes he had thrown came back fending the air in a spin, heading straight into his hands. “Let’s go!” he turned and started running.

The exercise was still going and they were beyond schedule.

Twelve minutes and forty two seconds later Anna was once again on her back. “Bloody hell,” she grunted with frustration. They had been ten metres away from the flag and Aladdin’s orders hadn’t accounted for the Pitchers guarding the flag.

Pitchers were twenty feet tall robots that would generally throw you in the air then blast you before you reached the ground again – that was when you were within their reach; otherwise they were just happy to shoot you with ball of electro-plasma so powerful they would hurt soldiers badly in spite of their protective suits. One blast of electro-plasma would shock you and send your gear haywire, one blast and the odds were playing against you.

Pitchers were massive, which was a blessing because they were easy to aim at, but they were also damn fast. The worst part was the fact that they always moved in pack, attacking all at once, making soldiers’ survival rates drop dangerously. On the field, when against Pitchers it was experience, calm and team work that made the difference between alive and dead.

Of course since this was training the Pitcher’s blasts were inoffensive. The training protective suits Anna and her team wore would only generate a small discharge to indicate that they’d been hit a first time, if they were hit three times then it would shut down – paralysing them in the process – to indicate that they were dead.

Anna had been thrown and hit a first time, never getting a chance to get back on her feet when three other Pitchers had blasted her in unison.

She closed her eyes and sighed. She could feel her body cursing her. She had been on her back and tasted blood twice already. If this was any indications for today’s training, she was in for a long day.

She sat up with a wince, then got on her feet.

“Thanks, yet again,” Aladdin sneered at her. “Stellar performance there, Spaz.”

“Yeah, fuck you too Al,” she replied jadedly. She had been the one to take the blunt of the Pitchers’ attack so she was not about to take crap from him. “It was your brilliant idea to face Pitchers full on.”

“We wouldn’t have had to if you hadn’t delayed us back there,” the Persian almost whined.

“It’s not my fault that roof crumbled down now, is it?”

“How about we stop wasting time and take it from the top?” Kristoff suggested already moving in direction of the head quarters.

Things went downhill from here. And at each failed attempt to complete the exercise, tempers rose (‘Why don’t _you_ learn the difference between right and left before giving us orders?’; ‘Do you even _know_ how to read a freaking map?!’; ‘It would help if you knew how to aim!’). By the end of training day they had managed to get to the flag a dozen of times. Out of those they had succeeded in bringing the flag to the safe point five times; and out of those five times they had completed the exercise only twice, their timing off a couple of minutes both times. Needless to say the mood was foul when they were exiting the training area for dinner time.

Anna entered the changing room to get rid of her gear mumbling to herself, bruised and battered from the grilling exercise.

“Training kicked your ass?”

Anna was so lost in her inner rant that she had failed to notice her friend and roommate, Mulan. The young Asian was an exceptional recruit. She was a born warrior, unlike Anna. Sure, Anna guessed that coming from a military family must have helped a lot.

They had been teamed up during the previous rotation, and Anna had learnt a lot from her friend. Mulan was a woman who could stay calm in a storm, she was quick to think on her feet and had a notion of team work and team that Aladdin was cruelly lacking.

During Mulan’s time as a leader they had failed exercises, but the young Asian had never lost her temper instead pointed out the positive, and tried to understand the mistakes. She had taken the blame for every failure, rather than yelled at her team mates she had talked to them and listened to their input before formulating her plans, she had observed each one of them to give them a position that would be the most optimal for each of them.

In short, she was a natural born leader. She knew how to create cohesion in her team and that made all the difference.

“Yeah, and not just a little bit,” Anna snorted. “I broke three ribs and my left arm twice today. Regenerative Caissons be blessed.”

Mulan chuckled in agreement. The RCs could mend broken bones and damaged tissues in a matter of minutes. They were a necessity for their training, because some days were tougher than others. Anna, being clumsy and or sometimes reckless was used to getting in a caisson at least once every day. In fact she was of the opinion that she should have a RC with her name on it.

“Ouch,” Mulan winced.

“To top it off, Aladdin has decided to call me Spaz,” Anna grumbled.

“He’s a jerk, don’t worry about it,” the young Asian’s tone left no doubt about the fact that she wasn’t fan of the young man.

“Yeah, well it doesn’t help.”

“Own it,” Mulan shrugged, upon seeing her roommate’s confused face she elaborated. “You know he’s always going to call you that from now on, because he knows it rattles you. Own the name, make it yours so he can no longer reach you with it.”

Anna tilted her head after a second, understanding her friend’s logic. She sat on a bench with a heavy sigh, then opened the top of her suit.

Mulan passed the standard light green shirt with her name on it and sat next to her friend to lace her black boots. “What is it?”

“Do you ever wonder why you’re here? In the army, I mean.”

Mulan pondered it for a second before answering. “No, not really. I know why I'm here.”

“I don’t…” Anna admitted. “I think…” she sighed. “I don’t feel like I'm making any progress. I know I'm good because I made it so far, but on the training area sometimes I easily lose my footing so to speak. If that’s how it is now, when I get on the field…” she decided to leave her sentence here, not wanting to think about her survival rate on the real field.

Mulan nodded in understanding. “You just need to find your drive.”

Anna looked at the young Asian with a frown. “My father, he fought on the front line for a long time, then he was hurt badly during the second Great War. He fought to protect his family. I want to do the same, and I know that the best way to do that is out there; the more distance I can keep between the drones and my family, the better. That’s my drive. What’s yours?”

“I have no idea,” Anna admitted after a long silence.

“The answer to that question changes everything,” Mulan pointed out then focused on knotting her boots. When she was done she put a hand on Anna’s kneed and bumped her shoulder lightly. “Come on, let’s get dinner, I’ll give you my chocolate bar to cheer you up.”

The mention of chocolate put a grin on Anna’s lips. “If you’re going to appeal to my feelings…”

 

**ooOoo**

“ _There are four sentinels coming your way from the east_.”

“Thank you, Olaf,” Elsa replied quickly.

She generated an ice path in front of her to slide her way forward. She came face to face with a Pitcher but before it could register her presence she raised her left hand in a snap movement. A spike of ice impaled the massive robot destroying it instantly.

She was skating fast on the ice path she was creating. She made ice picks with lightning speed. She speared the Sentinels in two seconds.

“Marshmallow, report situation,” she asked with a grunt as she smashed a small Pitcher between two walls of ice she just rose.

 _“East side is under control. ETA to the gate, 10 minutes. Over_.”

“ _I have five Pitchers on the north side_ ,” Olaf informed.

“Bring them to me, let’s close in on them,” Elsa ordered.

“ _Roger that_.”

They had located a nest of Sentinels on one of the outer frontiers of the Arendelle. As the ruler and chief of the army Elsa liked to keep any threat as far as possible from her kingdom.

The plan was simple, they would surrender the nest to contain the Sentinels and eventual Pitchers, then she would destroy the nest by crushing it under ice. However, they didn’t have time to reach the nest before Pitchers started coming their way.

Elsa moved north to meet Olaf half way, she could see her friend gliding in the air with his windboard, disorienting the Pitchers with his fast movements, leading them to shoot at one another.

While the Pitchers were focused on Olaf, Elsa moved swiftly generating a gigantic axe in her left hand, at the same time she created an ice half pipe to propel herself in the air. As soon as she had the momentum she wielded the axe with both hands splitting a Pitcher in two, she put both of her feet flat on top of it then pushed herself up again in the same momentum then came crashing down on the second Pitcher to her right.

Olaf used one Pitcher to destroy the other, then sent a dozen of plasma blasts against the last one standing.

Elsa didn’t have a chance to comment on his kills, seeing blasts coming their way she elevated an ice barrier to protect them. She counted six new Pitchers quickly surrounding them

“Olaf!” she called.

She didn’t need to elaborate, they have been working as a team for so long that he knew what she wanted at any given moment.

He dove with his windboard, grabbed Elsa’s hand then pushed the power of his board to send them off high into the air then let go of her.

Elsa generated two spears that she threw at the two Pitchers leading the charge, piercing their cores then concentrated her power to freeze the other four solid. Olaf then blasted the giant ice cubes. Elsa created an ice ramp to smoothly slide down to the ground level again.

“Is it just me or are there too much Pitchers around?” she panted.

“ _It’s not just you, and I know why_ ,” the deep voice of Lucius Best came in her earpiece. “ _We’re not hitting a nest, it’s an underground factory._ ”

“Damn it,” she cursed under her breath. “Change of plan, everyone,” she thought quickly. “I'm going to need time to get in and out of the factory,” she announced. “Lucius, I need an entry point.”

“ _We’re waiting for you at the west gate_.”

“On my way. Over.”

She was sore and her body was protesting against the excessive use of her powers. Things weren’t going according to plan. She couldn’t really say that she was surprised. In all her time as a leader she could count on one hand the times a plan went smoothly like it was supposed to. Once again she’d have to push through and deliver, trusting her team to do their part.

Taking down the factory took them over an hour. An intense hour that left them spent and bruised. When they finally made it back to Arendelle three hours later they were exhausted but thrilled to have yet again complete a mission.

“Home, sweet home!” Olaf beamed when they finally crossed the fortified gate of Arendelle.

“We made it with enough time to change before dinner,” Dash Parr stated happily. “Let’s hope things stay calm for the next two days.”

“And you’ve just jinxed us, thank you, meathead,” his older sister Violet joked while giving him a noogie.

“Come on!” Dash protested but didn’t struggle much to escape his sister’s hold. “This is just superstitions,” he rolled his eyes.

“A great man once said that superstitions were not the way, but he obviously wasn’t in our kingdom when he wrote his song,” Lucius stated with wisdom.

“Not you too, Lucius,” Dash chuckled.

“Just saying, I side with Vi on that one,” the tall, lean black man shrugged.

“In that case I advise you to hurry up,” Elsa pointed out with a smirk. 

“You were a rock star today, Elsa,” Lucius patted Elsa on the shoulder.

“I’ve learnt from the best,” she winked back at him, the familiar pun making her mentor grin. Lucius had the same ice power as her therefore he had trained her, even though she was destined to be ahead of him in the chain of command. “Come on guys, go make good on this down time while it lasts.”

Elsa watched the three members of her team walking away Violet and Dash still bickering affectionately while Lucius kept the score. She grinned at the sight but then stopped thinking about their mission, Dash had almost been hurt under her command, even though everything turned out okay, she resented herself for not being as a great leader as her father was.

“Somebody needs a warm hug.”

“Olaf, no…” she didn’t have a chance to protest before being wrapped in her slender friend’s arms. The next second her feet were no longer touching the ground as he held her up. She hung her head in resignation.

“Ollie, let her go,” Marshall’s deep voice resounded.

“She looked like she could use a hug,” Olaf explained with something that was close to a whine.

“Ugh… I already told you, the only reason everyone looks like they need a hug to you is because you’re a hug junkie,” Marshall reminded his brother.

Olaf put Elsa down but grinned nonetheless. “She feels better, don’t you feel better?”

Elsa did feel better but she wasn’t going to say so because Olaf didn’t need any encouragement. She was the Queen of Arendelle and the General of the Army, she had a reputation to uphold after all.

“You should be happy, we all made it back and completed the mission,” Olaf pointed out.

“You did do an excellent job out there, General,” Marshall agreed.

“It was sloppy,” she tempered. “Dash…”

“Is fine, bickering with his sister as per usual.”

“He was almost hurt, my commands were sloppy and rushed.”

“Of course they were. We had a plan that was blasted in pieces when we found out the target was bigger than we originally thought. We had to improvise, improvisation is by definition messy. That plan worked out perfectly, because your commands were spot on and this team works perfectly together,” Marshall said seriously. “The ‘what ifs’ are counterproductive.”

Elsa knew her friend was right, but it didn’t stop her from questioning her abilities as a team leader. “I repeat, excellent job out there, General,” Marshall drove his point home.

“Come on, Queenie, I'm starving,” Olaf broke the dark mood with a wide smile.

“What did I say about calling me that…” Elsa mumbled with annoyance even though she knew her complain fell into deaf ears.

They had grown up together and though only the two boys shared DNA, Elsa considered them her own brothers. Olaf, was the eldest but he had the cheer and enthusiasm of a five year old. He had the ability to be amazed at the simplest thing. Elsa envied him in that respect, even though sometimes she saw his attitude toward life as a default rather than a quality.

Marshall was the complete opposite of his older brother. Olaf was 5’9, only an inch taller than Elsa and had a slender frame, Marshall was 6’9 built like a battle axe, with wide shoulders and serious muscles. He was quite intimidating, mostly because he always seemed grumpy. Truth to be told he was a really funny guy, but you had to earn his trust to this the softer side of him. He was tough, and one had to be a fool to threaten or hurt someone he cared about.

They parted long enough to shower, agreeing on meeting back in the refectory to share a meal.

Elsa moaned with pleasure and relief as she let the scalding hot water wash the grime of the battlefield away. They would be gone for days sometimes weeks so they seldom had the luxury to enjoy their bathing time. It was always about speed and basic hygiene when they were out there; first because they didn’t have much time and second because they were numerous, therefore in order for everyone to shower they’d have five minutes tops per head to wash and get dressed.

The other reason she enjoyed showers so much was because they were her only real ‘me’ time. Being the ruler of the Kingdom of Arendelle and the General of the Army, meant she never really get to rest or to do anything for herself. First and foremost, she had responsibilities toward her people therefore she couldn’t slack off.

In the privacy of her shower, she could let go, cry, scream, she could just be. That is why she felt much more relaxed about the last mission when she stepped out of her bathroom fresh as a daisy with laundered clothes on.

She walked into the military refectory on her own, she spotted the table with her team easily thanks to Marshall’s towering height. The room was filled with dozen of hundreds recruits and soldiers yet as soon as she stepped in silence downed on the room like a heavy lid.

Elsa tended to forget that she was no longer a ‘simple’ citizen of Arendelle, not since her parents had passed away almost four years prior. Sure, she wasn’t really a simple ‘citizen’ then but at least she could somewhat go around unnoticed.

She focused on her breathing as she walked in the wide room, making her best to ignore the rising murmur. She had always had a problem with crowd. No, truth to be told she had always had a problem with basic human interaction period.

The fact was that she hadn’t had regular interaction with people until she was fifteen. Well that’s not completely true, she had grew up surrounded with people, at least until she was six. One day when she was playing with the kids of the castle staff, using her powers to build snow ramps they’d ride down, she had lost her footing and one ice blasts had hit a kid. If it hadn’t been for her parents’ quick reaction, the little girl would have probably died.

Elsa had been scared, really scared and that fear took over everything. She was constantly worried she would hurt someone, as a result her powers kept spilling unexpectedly. It became so intense that she could no longer be around anybody and spent all her time refraining herself from feeling any type of emotions for emotions were only translated through her rebellious powers.

By the time she was seven, at the exception of her parents, she could count on one hand the people that weren’t afraid of her or didn’t run at the first unwanted spill of her powers.

She was isolated because every kid was forbidden to be around her since the incident, the only ones who were too stubborn for their own good were Olaf and Marshall. Maybe it was due to the fact that they were orphans and therefore didn’t have parents to warn them and keep them away from Elsa, but for whatever reason they wouldn’t leave her alone.

There had been incidents with them as well, bruises and all yet the two boys had brushed it all off and stuck by her sides.

When she was eleven her parents had decided that she needed to interact with the people of Arendelle, at least during official events. She’d always wear gloves and avoid any physical contact, her parents being the rulers her aloofness wasn’t frown upon.

Then at the dawn of the second Great War being declared and she had asked to follow her parents’ footsteps and be trained to be a soldier she was twelve then.

The training had been tough especially when it came to control her powers but her mentor Lucius Best had been patient though merciless. Olaf and Marshall had once again been by her sides and together they had made it through.

On the battlefield leading an army, that was where she was the most comfortable because she had mastered her powers when it came to fighting. She grew confident fighting by her parents’ side and was even able to let herself relaxed and feel.

When her parents died however…

She was left alone, sad beyond measure, unprepared and overwhelmed with new responsibilities toward an entire kingdom.

All the control she had gained just vanished. It had been like her power belonged to someone else. She had had to shut herself in for weeks not to hurt anyone, her room transformed into a small ice cap.

If it hadn’t been for Olaf, Marshall, Kai and his wife Gerda, she probably would have ran away, fled the kingdom never to come back.

They had managed to get through her, helped her feel somewhat grounded again. Things weren’t the same though and now it was back to age seven all over again. If she didn’t keep a tight lid on her emotions at all time, then her powers would erupt against her will, scaring or worse hurting people.

The only way to deal with her grief had been to focus most of her energy in the army, at least on the battlefield she could give a free reign to her thirst for revenge. On the battlefield it was okay for her powers to explode violently.

She became a strong leader, a tough General. It had taken time but she had formed the perfect unit with people who had learnt to accept her quiet and odd demeanour, giving her a chance, and more importantly their trust.

If she was at ease on the battlefield, it was a different story when she was within the kingdom. There she felt suffocated because she had to stop herself from feeling anything for it was the only efficient way to control her powers.

Her inability to control her powers was the reason why she avoided any unnecessary mingling in the crowd. She knew that her behaviour had garnered the reputation of being a cold ruler, detached and uninterested in her people.

That statement couldn’t be further from the truth, but she could hardly argue against it. Even though it wasn’t obvious she was trying to open up to her people. So far, it hadn’t exactly been a success but at least she was trying.

Like right now. She hadn’t been to the common refectory since her parents had passed away. When her father was the General of the Army he made a point to eat with his troop at least once a week, he firmly believed that it showed to the women and men serving under his command that he valued them greatly, which he did.

Elsa did value each one of them, but had yet to meet them or interact or do something as a General to show them that they mattered greatly to her.

If she had been her father she’d have gone around the refectory, stopped at every table for greetings and a few words to know how missions or trainings were going.

As she was not her father, she was a nervous wreck. She had forgotten to put on gloves and she could already feel a very thin layer of cold around her hands. So she kept her focus on the table where her team mates were, never sparing a glance to anyone else, ignoring the rising murmur in her wake, her face an emotionless mask.

It was all she could do not lose the little control she had on herself.

As she walked to her table, Elsa wondered if she’d ever find the equilibrium she once had when her parents were still breathing, but never dwell on the subject because it put her in a really dark mood.

When she arrived at her table she sat down and put all her attention on her team because they were familiar territory, they made her feel safe and as long as she had that, then everything would be fine.

 

**ooOoo**

“…I'm telling you, the axes are better. Sure I can’t…” Kristoff’s sentence hung in the air.

“You can’t what?” Anna enquired. “Kristoff?”

Anna noticed the sudden quiet in the refectory, on instinct she followed her friend’s line of vision and immediately found the cause of the sudden shift of the atmosphere.

“It’s the Queen…” she stated the obvious in a whisper.

Anna understood the general stupor of the room. The Queen of Arendelle was like a shadow for most of them, they knew she existed but had rarely seen her if at all, much less up close and among them.

Anna watched, mesmerized by the regal figure and the way she seemed to dominate the room without wanting to.

“Pfff, look who decided to down themselves to the little people’s level.”

Anna’s head snapped in direction of Aladdin who wore a jaded expression. “Hey, a little respect, she the Queen and our commanding officer.”

“Please, she’s just for show. It’s a common knowledge that she doesn’t do squat for Arendelle and even less for the army,” the Persian shrugged.

“I wonder if intelligent things ever come out of your mouth,” Kristoff mused watching the brown haired boy.

“Screw you, Blondie.”

“She wouldn’t be General if she wasn’t a good soldier. No matter what, people wouldn’t risk their lives for someone not pulling their weight on the field. Everyone knows her team is the elite there is out there and people fight for a spot in there,” Kristoff argued.

“Hell, you don’t shut up about how our main goal is to integrate her team,” Mulan stated with disbelief.

“Oh her team is exceptional, I’ve seen them trained and they’re not the elite for nothing,” Aladdin replied. “ _They_ were training, but she was nowhere to be found,” he added. “And I don’t care if she can shoot rainbows out of her butt there is no way someone with no training whatsoever can keep up with them. I’m telling you, she’s just for show.”

“Or, she trains on her own because she has, oh I don’t know, a kingdom to run in her spare time,” Kristoff’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“You’re so naive. I know her kind, okay. She’s the kind of ruler who’s all about the appearance, she’s in front to make people believe she cares and so on but there are people behind doing the job while she takes all the credit,” Aladdin persisted.

“I don’t even know why I bother talking to you,” Kristoff rolled his eyes.

“I'm just stating the truth. Look at her, she looks as strong as a toothpick, I don’t care if she has powers, I bet you anything that I can take her any day.”

“Please, you can’t take a simple flag, so taking her… what a joke,” Anna retorted.

She was deeply annoyed at Aladdin’s attitude, his words didn’t sit well with her. Maybe she just didn’t like the notion of disrespect toward an officer of superior rank or just an authoritative figure, whatever it was she wanted to punch the Persian in the face. 

Once the Queen had reached her table and sat with who Anna assumed to be her team, everyone got back to their meal, stealing occasional glances toward Elsa.

Anna resumed her conversation with Kristoff about the advantage of his weapon of choice compared to hers. She couldn’t really focus though because for some reason her mind was still on the Queen.

 

**ooOoo**

“You should go get something to eat,” Olaf advised Elsa.

As if on cue, her stomach made a growl loud enough to make her blush. “Yeah, my stomach agrees,” she chuckled and stood up to go the self service line. Truth to be told she had been too nervous to go earlier, preferring to stay surrounded by her team mates, it helped greatly to make the rest of the room disappear.

She walked to where the platters were but then stopped on her tracks. There was a young recruit with red fiery hair in front of her, not moving, not doing anything really except blocking her way. “Excuse me,” she said softly.

The redhead turned, facing her, teal eyes standing out against her freckled face.

They stayed engaged in a weird stand off until Elsa broke the silence. “I’d like to eat,” her voice was flat.

The other girl blinked several times, mouth slightly agape. “I… I… I don’t… work in the kitchens.”

Elsa frowned at that answer. She didn’t know every recruit and soldier personally, but she knew how to recognize the different uniforms. “You’re blocking the access to the food,” she elaborated when the other girl didn’t move.

The redhead’s mouth formed a perfect ‘o’ as realization dawned on her.

“There you go,” a soft voice came from behind her redhead.

It was one of the kitchen staff, Elsa could tell that much because of the light blue uniform and the white toque on top of his head. The man was as tall and imposing as Marshall, but unlike her friend you could feel serenity and happiness oozing from him like tidal waves.

The redhead turned around and grabbed something hastily. “Thank you, Chien-Po, and give a hug to Kronk for me!”

“Sure thing, Red.”

Elsa had stepped forward, expecting the girl to keep moving forward as well since it was the sense of the queue. Unfortunately, the redhead spun around at the same time taking a step forward – as if she had forgotten Elsa’s presence during the past three seconds.

The inevitable collision occurred, and if she had managed to barely avoid head-butting the redhead, Elsa couldn’t avoid the splash of warm liquid all over her front.

She immediately look down at her torso, her freshly laundered white shirt slowly absorbing what she identified has cocoa, turning it into an ugly brownish shade.

“Oh my goodness!” the redhead exclaimed in horror.

Elsa was still processing what had just happened, her head snapped back at the redhead when the girl started to dab at her chest frantically. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

Elsa could feel her eyes widened as she gave a ‘what are you doing?’ look to the other girl. It took another ten seconds for the redhead to realize that she was foundling Elsa’s breasts, her face went from pale to tomato red in a nanosecond “And I'm touching you inappropriately… oh my god… sorry, sorry, sorry,” she almost jumped back.

Elsa could feel her jaw slackened. She was trying to find something to say, but she was stunned? Mortified? Both?

“I’m so sorry, I forgot you were there… and I ruined your shirt… I'm so embarrassed right now…” the redhead spat rapidly.

“General!” the redhead’s rant was interrupted by a young courier coming toward them.

Elsa’s head turned but her eyes lingered on the redhead before resting on the young man. “This just came in,” he handed Elsa a folded slip of paper.

She read attentively, her mind immediately racing with new information. “Gather my team, five minutes out,” she ordered sharply and the young man departed at once.

Elsa looked back at the redhead again still at lost as to what to say. She sighed and decided to move on but her progression was stopped by a hand on her wrist. For the second time in less than a minute she was shocked by the other girl’s action.

“Wait… sorry,” the redhead immediately let go as if the contact with Elsa’s skin had burnt her. She fished in her pockets and held four chocolate candy bars toward Elsa. “I ruined your dinner, and you shouldn’t go on the field on an empty stomach… I suppose anyway, I mean I wouldn’t know since I’ve never actually been on the field before… though if it was me I probably wouldn’t eat to avoid any vomit incident… what with nerves and all that…” she spoke in one breath.

Elsa blinked at the bars but didn’t move. “I'm kind of a chocolate addict and Chien-Po… well I kind of get some extra under the table… not that I'm taking the ration of anyone, I mean, if I don’t take it they’ll go to waste… not to say that I'm making a sacrifice or anything or that I'm forcing myself… and I should really shut up now…”

The redhead gave Elsa the impression to get caught in the eye of a cyclone, you didn’t know which way was up and everything was moving very fast.

Elsa shook her head and took the candy bars cautiously as if they might explode at any time. The redhead beamed. “You owe me now,” she joked then her smile immediately disappeared as she probably realized the familiarity with which she had address Elsa. “I mean… you don’t… I'm… I'm joking of course… I mean…” she cleared her throat and forced her mouth shut.

“See, that all on you meathead!” Violet’s reprimand to her brother reached Elsa’s ears, effectively snapping her out of the daze she was currently in.

She started to walk toward her team, turning her back to the redhead then stopped and turned around. “What’s your name?” she finally asked.

“Red… my friends call me Red… I mean, I'm Anna… uh… I mean, recruit Sunfield, Ma’am,” she redhead closed her eyes briefly in exasperation probably berating her inability not to ramble.

Elsa simply nodded then turned her heels, soon she was strutting toward her team mates. “Let’s go,” she led them away.

 

**ooOoo**

Anna walked back to her table in autopilot, her mind still trying to process the mortification she felt. She was just getting her extra chocolate fix, she figured she deserved the treat considering how grilling the training had been which is why she had gone to see the Chef Chien-Po.

Chien-Po was like a big teddy bear, always smiling, always calm and there was just something about him making you feel serene and happy. The word around was the he was also a fierce soldier but it was hard an image to conjure after meeting the man.

Chien-Po had noticed how much Anna was fond – addicted, really – of chocolate and he had started to put some extra chocolate candy bars on the side for her. Anna had noticed the extra treat with her meals and figured that the Chef was just being sweet because she was nice to him and always took time to go and compliment his cuisine – he was an amazing cook, which wasn’t something you’d expect when one was cooking for thousands of people so famished after training and missions that the sole of their shoes with seasoning would probably be enough to satisfy their hunger; Chien-Po put his heart in everything he did and it showed.

Eventually Anna had started to feel a bit guilty, thinking that she was most likely depriving someone else from their chocolate but Chien-Po had explained that some people didn’t like chocolate and therefore he always had little extras, he had figured that it was better to give it to people who would enjoy the little treat.

Even though, Anna still couldn’t believe such a thing as not liking chocolate was possible she stopped feeling guilty, ready to take one, two, three or sometimes four extra chocolate bars. This was clearly a sacrifice she was more than willing to make.

Today was no exception, she had gone to compliment Chien-Po on his amazing honey chicken with spinach puff. He had been pleased to hear she had had a great meal but told her that he had only made the chicken the puffs were the work of the second Chef Kronk.

Kronk was built like a battle axe and in spite of his impressive frame he was shy and as sweet and gentle as Chien-Po. The man had blushed at Anna’s compliments of his spinach puffs but had been adamant about not sharing the secret of his recipe. Touched by Anna’s attention, Kronk had offered to make a very special treat: hot chocolate with a dash of cinnamon and whip cream.

Anna had salivated at the simple mention of the beverage, she was barely holding still as she was waiting for Chien-Po's return. Somehow everything went downhill from that moment on.

Someone had come from behind her and she hadn't been prepared for that someone to be Elsa Arendelle, the Queen of Arendelle and General in Chief of the Army of Arendelle. Sure she had watched her walk in but she would have never expected to interact with her any time soon in her life time… any time in her life time, period.

She had frozen upon facing her Commanding Officer, then made an ass of herself not realizing that she was in the way. Chien-Po had called her and for a second she felt like he had rescued her… that was before she turned around to go back to her table colliding with the Queen and spilling her precious hot chocolate onto her.

It could have stopped there, for she felt enough embarrassment to want to be thunderstruck on the moment, but no, of course she made it even worse. She confounded herself with apologies and started immediately to clean her mess… until she realized that she was rubbing the other woman’s breasts.

She was ready to swear that her body temperature reached high enough for her to experience the mythical instantaneous combustion. Once again, it could have ended there, but nope, if there was one credit Anna could always claim it was her ability to dig the deepest hole for herself in any given situation. That one was no exception.

As if things weren't bad enough Anna had grabbed the Queen's wrist in a cavalier manner never minding the fact that it was probably ground for execution, then started to ramble about the field and chocolate and what not, if the look on the Queen's eyes was of any indication, the Commanding Officer now officially thought of her as insane.

Once she reached her table, Anna let herself plop down, her head felt heavy and slowly she found herself leaning forward until her forehead hit the table. A regular banging started, she didn't know if she was trying to crack her skull open or just physically knock the past five minutes out of her head.

In her haze she finally became aware of a breathy laughter. When she looked up she saw Aladdin holding his ribs and laughing so hard his face had turned red. "Way… way…" he tried talking but failed. He rubbed one of his knuckles under his eyes to erase the happy tears forming at the corner of his eyes.

"Never mind him," Kristoff said jadedly.

"I'm so screwed," Anna whined then started banging her head again.

"Way… to… go, Spaz," Aladdin said in between hiccups of laughter. "Dude, now I have something to cheer me up forever."

"Shut the hell up, Al," Kristoff was annoyed now.

"Hey now, don't hate on me," the Persian protested in a laughter. "I'm not the one who burnt my career into flames before it even begun," he beamed with barely contained glee.

"Like I said, never mind him," Kristoff tried to reassure his friend. "It's not that bad."

Anna stopped her banging, lifted her head up and looked at the blond dubiously. "I just spilled hot chocolate on the Queen of Arendelle who also happened to be the General in Chief of the Army; I groped her while trying to fix that mess and to top it off I vomited random babbling out of nervousness. Go on, say that it's not bad again."

Kristoff pursed his lips and blew his cheeks. Yes, it was as bad as it could get.

"That was epic, Spaz," Aladdin add another layer of mockery. "You'll never see a battlefield in your lifetime," he went on. "In fact, you'll be lucky if she lets you work in the kitchens," he smirked. "Way to go, way to go."

Sven growled and straighten up so that even if he was sitting his imposing frame was towering the Persian. It had the immediate desire effect and Aladdin immediately swallowed the new snide comment that was obviously about to launch from his lips.

"Alright, alright, no need to get all sensitive," Aladdin rose his hands in surrender. "I'll stop. Gee, lighten up a bit."

Sven stared him down for another minute just for extra assurance then looked at Anna.

"Sven is right," Kristoff continued as if they hadn't been interrupted. "It was an accident, it happens. No one was hurt. Besides, she'll be so busy with whatever she went to do to remember the incident."

"She took my name," Anna moaned. "Somehow I doubt she'll ever forget."

"Well… I say we don't jump to worse case scenarios," Kristoff sighed.

Anna let her head fall to the table again. "Oh fuck me… I'm so screwed."

 

**ooOoo**

Five minutes later they were gearing up inside the armoured vehicle leading them on the field. Elsa changed her shirt then started to put her suit on.

“Say, I have a question,” Marshall started as he was working his belt. “What the penalty for foundling your superior is? Or is there a pass when you do within the two first minutes of introduction?”

Elsa stopped her movement and glared at Marshall whose expression was neutral. “It is a legitimate question,” he added.

“Aren’t you hilarious now?” she replied flatly though she could feel heat rise to her cheeks.

The tall man’s face broke into a wide smile, happy that his teasing had the desired effect. “At least she seemed nice, but really you shouldn’t cheapen yourself, insist on diner before second base next time,” he winked.

This time Elsa sent a small wave of cold dust in his face which only served to make him chortle.

“Ugh, I didn’t even get to my dessert,” Dash’s whine called their attention.

Elsa suddenly remembered the chocolate candy bars she had in her possession and tossed one to the young blonde. “There you go,” she said.

“Cool!” Dash exclaimed and started tearing the wrapping paper apart.

“Oh dude, I want some too!” Violet chimed in.

Elsa chuckled and tossed the second bar to the other girl. “Thanks,” she beamed. “You know you shouldn’t even get a treat, after all you’re the one who jinxed us,” she teased her little brother.

Lucius shook his head at the offered candy bar so she tossed it to Olaf, his face illuminated so much she was convinced she had given him some gem stone.

“What, no treat for me?” Marshall pouted.

“Guess who shouldn’t have teased me earlier?” Elsa replied with cheek.

“Oh come on…” his voice almost came close to being whiney.

Elsa stuck her tongue out, then eventually tossed the last bar to him. He hadn’t caught the candy bar yet that her stomach rumbled loudly. He looked at her with a mix of surprise, amusement and admiration at the fact that such a sound could come from her.

He then erupted into laughter, tossing the bar back at her “Sounds like you could use it more than I do,” he winked at her and she blushed.

“Here, share with me,” Olaf offered half his bar to his brother.

Marshall smiled affectionately and took the chocolate, rubbing the top of his older brother’s head gently. “Thanks, Ollie.”

“You’re welcome,” Olaf’s face lit up even more. Elsa couldn’t help the fond smile on her face, Olaf could truly spread happiness with the simplest gesture.

Elsa finished putting her suit on, then started to eat the chocolate all the while studying the information they had on the breach they were about to tackle.

Five minutes later they started to slow down sign that they were close to the drop zone. “Alright, listen up everyone. Here’s how we are going to proceed.”

She exposed her plan, and gave each one of them a precise instruction. “Keep your eyes open, stay alert and careful at all time; be prepared for anything.”

They all nodded. The transporter came to an halt and they all stood up gathering in a tight circle, they put their right forearm up and brought them together.

“I promise,” Elsa said firmly.

“We promise,” they answered in unison. 

On their very first mission together she promised to lead them with honour and reason, to protect their lives with her own and to bring each one of them home in one piece; in return they had promised to serve her with honour and reason, to have each other’s back, and always complete their mission or die trying. Every time they went out they reaffirmed this simple oath.

“Rock and roll,” she nodded and they lined up toward the exit of the vehicle. 

Elsa felt excitation in the pit of her stomach and adrenaline starting to fuel her veins. As she was about to step out in the open she unconsciously licked her lips tasting the last remnant of chocolate on her skin. She grinned in spite of herself, she had one extra reason to get back home this time, she wanted to know a little more about the redhead.

She wanted to know a little more about Anna Sunfield.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Thank you very much for taking interest in the story, for the kudos and the reviews. Here's part 2. I just want to point out that the sign '--oOo--' means that time has elapsed between the scenes while 'ooOoo' means that the scenes are taking place at the same moment but in different location.
> 
> Anyway, on we go.
> 
> Enjoy,  
> So ;-)

**Part 2**

Anna ducked her head down, then slid on her knees to the next cover. She peeked quickly to count the sentinels. She generated arrows and shot two out of the three flying devices. “Go!” she muttered in her microphone.

She made a dash to the next cover, making sure to keep the sentinel's attention on her just so it wouldn't register, Kristoff, Sven and Aladdin getting inside a building with their flag.

They had finally figured it out. The best way to complete the objective was to keep at least one sentinel trained on one of them at all time. If they were busy chasing one of them they weren't tracking the others. Of course it meant that one of them had to be a bait but really that was nothing. No, it wasn't true, it was not the coolest gig, but all they had to do was to stay sharp and keep moving, then once the others were in place they'd have to destroy every sentinel and regroup.

So far that plan had worked every time, sure they still had to work on their execution timing but really they were making progress.

" _We're in place Spaz, wrap it up_ ," Aladdin ordered.

She shot the sentinels surrounding her with ease, each arrow touching their target bulls eyes. She then run from cover to cover – one was never too careful – until she joined the rest of her team.

They were staying in the rumbles of what used to be the atrium of a building. Now there was not a wall standing and debris all around. The space was wide and open, and as soon as Anna stepped in, the hardest part began; they had to make sure to stay alive and keep the flag for the next three minutes. It was no easy fit considering that now they'd been facing pitchers and sentinels together.

They formed a circle around the flag each of them pointing at a direction, their back to the flag, ready for anything coming their way. The familiar beep announcing that three minutes countdown until the end of the exercise echoed from the HopeComs on their wrists.

"Hold steady, don't do anything stupid and whatever happens, nothing comes close to that flag," Aladdin muttered.

Within the next ten seconds all hell broke loose, Pitchers and Sentinels were surrounding them, coming from every side trying to get to the flag, but they moved swiftly and fast.

There were close calls but finally after what felt like an hour the sweet sound of a siren filled their ears.

They had made it. Again.

Aladdin immediately looked at his HopeComs. Kristoff, Sven and Anna stared at him, not daring to watch their own device. Aladdin sighed deeply and they all groaned with frustration.

"Twenty two minutes, forty two seconds," the Persian boy's voice made them snap their head back at him with enough speed to cause whiplashes. Aladdin was abhorring a smug grin. "Boo yah!" he exclaimed.

They all cheered and exchanged high fives, they had just crushed their previous best time by seventeen minutes and some seconds, no less.

"I told you I'm a freaking genius at planning," Aladdin boasted.

Of course, he would take all the credit for their outstanding performance.

Their success wasn't due to his performance as a leader, they were still cruelly lacking when it came to work together. There was still no traction between them, most of the time it was hard to believe they spoke the same language.

This time however, something had happened. Sure part of it was to be credited to their individual skills. They were bad as a team but excellent individually. Their skills were complementary and if they knew how to work together they'd be a terrific team.

The fact that they had just done the best training ever was mostly due to luck, considering the amount of mistakes that were made in the process.

They had managed to move and act as a team from the second they had stepped in the arena somehow, or rather for the first time they hadn't hinder one another. It was hard to call that osmosis, and they had to be fools to think for a second that it would last, but right now what mattered was the fact that they had done it. They had been a team for twenty two minutes and forty two seconds, they had been a team and the result was stellar.

Kristoff, Sven and Anna exchanged glances before rolling their eyes at their leader's arrogance, they silently agreed not to let it spoil their victory.

They had aced the exercise meaning the training was over for today and more importantly, in two days they would be allowed to advance to the next and last stage of their training.

Finally.

**ooOoo**

"… in conclusion I want a team keeping an eye on every frontier at all time. Any hostile device must be destroyed," Elsa declared firmly, she then touched the table and the holographic display changed.

She was having a meeting with every high ranked officer under her command. “I want the gates to be checked and reinforced.”

“General Arendelle, if I may?” Elsa looked up from the holographic display to look at Lieutenant General Tarzan Robinson. Tarzan was a tall man with a chiselled jaw and a lanky yet muscular frame but his most distinct feature was the fact that he was the only officer to wear his hair long, yet the brown mane was always neatly falling over his shoulders, never making him look unkempt. The only time he had wore it short was during their formative years in the army but just like the mythological Samson it had felt utterly wrong. Elsa herself had insisted that he kept his hair long, force of habit.

Elsa nodded to signal that she was listening. Tarzan rose from his seat, to address his fellow officers.

“I won’t speak for all of us, but during two out of my last five missions, my team and I were to clear off a nest but as it turned out we had to take down a factory. I do not point a finger at anyone or lay any blame, but it seems that our Intel’s data are outdated.”

“My team faced the same problem just this week,” Elsa nodded. She looked at every officer in turns and they all confirmed that the problem had touched them as well.

She returned her attention to the Lieutenant Robinson so he could go on. “I do command your latest directives because they are necessary, however I think it is urgent that you mandate a team in order to update the mapping of the area, especially since the kingdom is steadily expanding.”

Elsa nodded "I agree, this should be the first order," she turned to the officer two places on the left of Lieutenant Robinson while Tarzan sat back on his armchair. "Lieutenant Lumière, can you get a team started immediately?"

Lieutenant General Lumière was a slender man with a long face, a long nose, round cheeks and hair cut in a square at the exception of a small quiff resting against his forehead in a neat spring. "Certainly, General," the man nodded curtly his voice soft as butter but firm. "Sergeant Lightyears," he called.

One of the young men who were standing in one of the corners came to Lumière's sides immediately, standing at attention. "Sir."

"I want you to go and find the Sergeants Lolift and Vega, tell them to gather every single maps we have of the battlefield and to put out every mission reports from the six past months. I'll see them after this meeting to give them directives."

"Yes, Sir!" the young man replied with a nod and departed from the room immediately.

Lumière turned back to Elsa. "You shall have something in the coming days."

"I know, Wally and Eve are quite extraordinary when it comes to gather data," Elsa smirked knowingly. "Does anyone have an issue they wish to discuss?"

Elsa waited, giving them the time to think and eventually manifest themselves. She always dreaded the meetings with her Lieutenants, always feeling like she had to prove herself. She was the youngest officer, and yet outranked them all. They had fought together so they knew she had the experience and that she had earned every single chevron ornamenting her suit. That being said it couldn’t be denied that her last promotion had been due to the circumstances.

Her parents’ passing had given her the power by default. Of course, that last promotion had been subjected to a vote and the fact that all the officers currently sitting in front of her had unanimously backed her up as their new leader was telling.

Elsa didn’t take their trust for granted, she saw in it an incentive to be the best leader possible. She had been groomed by her parents to lead, and she ruled following their footsteps and guidelines the firsts of which were to always be fair, firm and reasonable.

She was looking up to each one of her officer. They had experience, knowledge she could learn from. She had complete trust in them, and in her three years as the head of the army she had been proved that her trust wasn’t misplaced.

“I want you all to double the training of your respective team,” she announced when no one raised an issue.

“Is there a threat we should be aware of?” Lieutenant Helen Parr asked calmly. She was a petite woman with the ability to elongate her limbs like a rubber band. She was also the mother of Violet and Dash.

“None that I know of, but I don’t think I’m wrong when stating that every gate of the kingdom has been approached by sentinels in the span of the last six weeks. I don’t believe in coincidences and if I refuse to raise the alarm just yet, I’d rather be cautious and take those events as the sign that someone out there might be up to something.”

Helen Parr nodded her hazel eyes trained on Elsa. “Should we reinforce the security of the Kingdom and make sure every citizen is up to date with the emergency procedures?”

“Perhaps it would be wise,” Elsa decided after a short reflexion.

She looked at the bulky, blond man sitting to Helen’s right, Lieutenant Bob Parr, her husband. “Bob,” she addressed the Lieutenant Bob Parr by his name out of habit.

Elsa remembered the first meetings during which it had been confusing to keep up a conversation while only using their title, she had had to constantly specify who she was talking to. The Parrs had insisted on the more familiar use of their first names when they were both in the same room in the future even on official business, after two headache-inducing meetings. No one could deny that the more familiar use of their first name rather than the generic ‘Lieutenant Parr’ was easier on everyone during meetings.

“I want you to supervise the reinforcement of the structure of buildings and walls.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I also want the underground bunkers to be checked for any flaw or chink and for supplies."

"You want a minute report on everything I presume," Bob stated more than asked.

"As per usual."

"Yes, Ma'am," Elsa nodded at his answer then turned to Helen.

“Helen, I want you to gather a team and do quiet drills. I do not want people to worry about anything, it’s just to be sure to refresh their memories. I don’t want any panic to arise among the population.”

“Of course.”

“If anything in the security systems need to be upgraded or bettered report it to Kai, he’ll do what’s necessary immediately.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Helen echoed her husband.

Elsa looked at her notes and mentally reviewed the last hour. When she was satisfied that every point she had wanted to discuss had been addressed she asked one last time if any of her officers had something to say. They all confirmed that they were done. “Well, in that case this meeting is dismissed. As always you may come to me if any of you encounter any problem or have suggestions to make regarding your missions. Thank you.”

They all saluted her and rose from their seats. Elsa let out a relieved breath and then proceeded to shake hands with the different officers, exchanging some friendly words with each of them.

They had become, in a way, a family to her. They did respect her and her rank, they didn’t look down on her, but it was an unspoken consensus for them to all look after Elsa, perhaps out of loyalty to her late parents. In fact except when they are in meetings or have to put on their official role, they all address to Elsa by her first name, and treat her like a child of theirs - without infantilizing her.

"Elsa," she turned around to face Lieutenant Hades Elysium . Hades was the Lieutenant in charge of the training of the new recruits.

"Hades," she smiled at the officer. "It's a good thing you're here, I was wondering about the latest recruits."

"Well, you'll be glad to know that seventy two of them just made it to the last part of the training."

The platinum blonde immediately thought about Anna Sunfield. The redhead had been in her mind since their interaction in the refectory. She wanted to know more about the recruit, mostly because she had been the first new person in her life in a long time.

Elsa had wondered where Anna was affected, how long had she been a recruit, on which division was she training, was she any good? She had been extremely clumsy, was it a treat that followed her in training, if so would she be among the dismissed recruits?

"Could you tell me about…" Elsa never got a chance to finish her sentence when, Kai, her personal advisor and second in command came to her. "Excuse me," she said to Hades who nodded, then turned to Kai.

Kai leant near close to her ear and informed her that she had another meeting in five minutes and she should use that time to review it. She bobbed her head in acknowledgement and turned back to the Hades. "I'm sorry, but I have to go."

"Not a problem," Hades grinned.

"Thank you," she saluted him politely but just as she was about to go she looked at him again. "Would it be okay if I drop by the training arenas to see the new recruits at work… maybe some time in the upcoming weeks?"

The tall man smirked, his head tilted on the side. "You do realize that you never have to ask for permission regarding anything, seeing as you are… the Queen of this kingdom and the General of the army, right?"

Elsa blushed at his remark. It was one of the odd sides of being the youngest, even though she was outranking them all, she tended to forget rather easily that she was technically their superior.

"Right," she chuckles nervously. "I'll come by, in that case."

"I'll look forward to it," Hades nodded then walked away.

Five minutes later Elsa found herself standing in front of new people this time to discuss the affairs of the kingdom.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. First I'd like to congratulate you on the tremendous work you have achieved, Arendelle is standing tall thanks to your constant efforts. Rest assure that I appreciate fully everything you do…"

**––oOo––**

"Well congratulations to you all, you've made it to the final stage of training," the grave voice of Hades declared to the seventy two recruits standing at attention in front of him. "The real training starts now. Some of you will quit for this time, others won't be deemed fit to go onto the battlefield, and if you're unlucky some of you might die during exercises."

Hades was completely nonplussed by his announcement, but Anna felt the first droplet of dread settling in her stomach. She had naively thought that the worst part was behind them when in fact they hadn't even brushed it yet.

"You will learn strategies, how to handle new weapons and equipment. I hope you've had a good night sleep last night because it was the last before long."

Anna could feel nausea slowly but steadily filling her. There was something about Lieutenant Hades that just screamed 'you're about to regret ever signing up for the army'. Until that moment she had only known him by name. He was the officer in charge of the training, on the first day he had just stood in the shadow, tall, imposing, his face expressionless. The drilling instructor had mentioned his name but that was that.

Every step of the training led to this moment, they led Anna into the realm of Lieutenant General Hades Elysium and it was a common knowledge that it was also known as the underworld or realm of hell. Anna's mind was running every possible scenario of what was to come. She wasn't naive, she knew she was good but she also realized that she had made it so far thanks to luck.

And lucky she had been. First she had never been set apart from Sven and Kristoff, meaning that even in the toughest moments she was in her comfort zone, she always had encouragement and people to push her when she felt like giving up (and that feeling had pretty much stuck with her after the fourth broken bones, two days into the training).

"I'll introduce myself again. I'm Lieutenant General Hades Elysium, might as well know my name since you'll be most likely cursing me under your breath soon."

For someone who was about to torture them he was of good composition and the little grin on his face could almost be comforting (or scary considering that he was aware of what he was about to make them endure, that grin could be interpreted as him being rated high on the psychopathic scale)

"I know, I know. You have probably heard a lot of things about me," Hades continued. "Apparently the grapevine depict me as some sadist, they call my training 'the little parcel of hell in Arendelle'," he chortled. "It is inaccurate."

Hades almost look like a benevolent father, at least right until that soft grin disappeared from his face. "The truth is that Hell is a sweet place filled with rainbows and unicorns compared to my training."

A cold chill ran down the spine of all the recruit, the glint in Hades' eyes was just not a good omen and they knew it. "What you need to understand is that my job is to train you to be fit to fight next to the elite soldiers, and this task cannot be achieved by holding your hands."

Hades started to unbuttoned his shirt, he shaded it over his shoulders and fold it neatly before putting is down on the table behind him. He cracked his neck on each side and turn to them again. "I can't guarantee the success of each one of you," he paused and looked at every single one of them in turn once he had memorized their faces the smirk on his lips was very unpleasant. "I can guarantee you something though, you will hate me in within the next fifteen minutes, and that hate will grow from that point on. Don't worry, I'm very fine with it," he chuckled.

The smirk disappeared. "Turn to your right, right!" he ordered.

Moving as one single man they backed their right feet and operated a half turn to the right in a sharp movement.

Anna could see that they were at the beginning of an obstacle course. For the first time she felt some of the tension on her shoulders go. She could do this in her sleep, they had been eating obstacle courses for months, this was one of the things she had mastered.

For a brief moment she thought that Hades had just scared them off with words (she knew for a fact that sometimes psychological warfare was the toughest). Little did she know, she was about to learn two things. First, Hades' words weren't just that, they were promises; second, he was wrong about one thing, they would hate him by the time they'd hit the five minutes mark.

"It is in your interest to keep up the pace," Hades warned them as he walked to the head of their group, the letter forming his name stretched against the muscles of his back on his white shirt.

"MOVE YOUR ASSES MAGGOTS!" he bellowed before sprinting ahead of them all.

As if touched by lightening they all came to life, running at a fast, fast, pace for what would be the first taste of what was to come.

**––oOo––**

"Who am I meeting next?" Elsa asked Kai.

"Sergeants Lolift and Vega for a progress report," Kai replied.

Kai had been the Advisor of her parents. The man had a kind face, a lanky figure (who could fool anyone into thinking that he was not very strong, but the wisest knew better), piercing green eyes that shone with honesty and loyalty, his brown hair peppered with white streaks. The years had been fair on him, time had barely left a mark on him, as a result he looked young in spite of the three decades standing between him and Elsa.

In addition to be the family Advisor, he had been her parents' best friend. He and his wife had also participating in the raising of Elsa. Times had been rough after the incident that led to her isolation, yet Kai and his wife Gerda had never flinched away from the child in spite of the small incidents with ice occurring on regular basis. After her parents had passed away, they had taken the parts providing enough love and affection to keep Elsa grounded.

Elsa rolled her shoulders and moved her head in a slow circle. She had been sitting through meeting after meeting for the past four days. She knew how important they were for she needed to always keep up with what was going on in her kingdom at all time, but she'd be lying if she said that it was not a tedious part of her job.

Of course she had the power to delegate things, but she refused. As tempting as that would be she could hear her parents' disapproval for such a thing.

' _Being a ruler is no vacation Elsa. You may be able to do whatever you please, it doesn't mean you should. You must consider your people carefully at all time, for without people there is no kingdom._ '

Her father's words echoed loudly in her head.

' _Never delegate when you can do it yourself. You'll find that there is a lot you can do yourself. Do surround yourself with loyal people you can trust because you cannot rule alone_.'

"It is the last meeting of the day, I suggest you get some rest once it is done. You have not taken a single moment for yourself since you came back four days ago."

"I will."

"Elsa…" Kai held back a reprimand. They have had that discussion several times already, there was nothing she didn't know about his opinion on her ability to take care of herself.

"If your instinct is right, you might find yourself being out there a lot," he referred to the battlefield. "You better than anyone know that the kingdom never sleeps…"

"I know, I need to take care of myself if I want to be efficient on every front."

"Your powers make this task even more important."

Elsa sighed, unable to deny that last statement. She was the first defence mechanism of the kingdom and that was true not just when she was on the battlefield.

Kai was right and she knew that much, but it didn't stop her from being annoyed at the older man, mostly because she hated feeling like a stubborn child (even though, ironically enough, she was acting like one).

"Well…" she wrung her hands together, one of the few nervous habits she had. "If it's not trouble on such a short notice, I think I would enjoy Gerda's cooking. You did tell me once that the best nights' sleeps are preceded by great meals, I'm not against testing that theory."

"As if we'd ever deny the opportunity to spend some time with you," Kai grinned, satisfied that his warning had been taken into consideration. "Are you ready?"

"As much as I'll ever be."

**––oOo––**

"Dunbroch, can you tell me what this is?" Hades asked looking at a young woman with a short mane of fire red hair. He was holding a two and a half inches of diameter, less than an inch thick, white flat disk.

"It's an electro–puck, Sir," Merida Dunbroch answered a thick Scottish lilt.

"What does it do?"

"It delivers a charge of fifty thousand volts thirty seconds after manual activation. There’s a timer allowing to set a delay of activation up to five minute, Sir."

"Exactly. This is a powerful device in spite of its small size. You can hold up to four of those in your current suits. As with all weapons, you want to be careful with those. Dunbroch, how does one use this device on the field?”

“We can throw it directly at the target, such as Pitchers, or we can use it to create an electric net against Sentinels.”

“Correct. Sunfield, catch," Hades threw the device to Anna. “Don’t you drop it,” he ordered.

As soon as the puck was in her hand she held it tight. She felt a vibration in her suit and without her doing anything her helmet covered her head. She was startled when electric arcs snaked around her limbs. She was immediately surprised at the fact that she didn't feel anything, not even a tingle, the suit protected her completely. What was more, it seemed to contain the electricity so no one near her got shocked in spite of the powerful charge.

“It goes without saying that fifty thousand volts will not only kill you, they will turn you into a block of human coals. It is for that reason that your suits have been designed to protect you from unfortunate death by electroshock. Your suit will detect if you’re holding an active puck, and absorb its energy should you still be holding it after thirty seconds.”

“Cool,” Anna muttered to herself as she watched the electricity wrapped around her. After a full minute the electric arcs died.

“Do not take that as an invitation to stay near an active puck,” Hades immediately added. “Sunfield, your suit just absorbed fifty thousand volt, as a result your HopeComs and your ammunitions generator won’t work for two minutes, time necessary for your suit to reinitiate its data. I do not need to tell you that two minutes on the battlefield while under attack are the equivalent of a lifetime. Those pucks are weapons, not toys.”

“Sir yes, Sir!” the recruits replied in unison.

“Moving on,” Hades continued. “Parr, what is this?” he held another disc similar to the first one only it was blue.

Jack-Jack Parr cleared his throat. “It’s an ice-puck, Sir?”

“Are you telling me or asking me?” Hades narrowed his eyes at the young man.

“It is an ice-puck, Sir,” the young man repeated with confidence.

“And what does it do?”

“It… it creates thick ice… coat around the enemy… Sir.”

“Parr, being a Gifted is one thing, it doesn’t dispense you from knowing your weapons,” Hades reprimanded. “Make no mistake, you’ll need to use them along your powers on the field.”

“Sir, yes, Sir.”

Hades threw the puck at a metal crate a few feet from him. The puck stuck to it like a magnet then ice sprouted out, within two second the crate was completely covered by a twenty inches of ice. Hades sent a powerful ball of fire against it and the crate was pulverized.

“You want to take a shot at the frozen target immediately, tell me why that is?”

Jack-Jack hesitated for a second before answering. “Hum… Pitchers and Sentinels have the ability to… uh… they can break free from the ice in thirty seconds or less… it uh… it depends on whether or not they have been weakened before being hit with a puck. Also the ice… uh…”

“Congratulation Parr, you’ve just won the grand prize of two hundred burpees in reward to your dazzling knowledge of weaponry. You may collect it right now.”

Jack-Jack held back a sigh of discontentment and started doing the exercise.

“Next weapon…” Hades trailed off as he choose his next target “Fa, enlighten me,” Hades held a green disc in his hand.

Mulan immediately launched into the detailed description of the weapon, its use and effect, hoping she wouldn’t forget anything, because she knew that if she failed her ‘reward’ would make her envy Jack-Jack’s.

**––oOo––**

"The head figures of the assimilated cities are here," Kai announced.

Elsa was exhausted, the past few weeks had been hectic between missions on the field and series of mandatory meetings she had to attend. Ironically, the meetings were probably what worn her out the most.

"Send them in," Elsa gave a short nod in his direction.

Twelve people filled the conference room, she stood up from her seat to salute each one of them personally.

Over the last three decades the kingdom of Arendelle had mutated into what it was now. Long before Elsa was born Arendelle was a smaller kingdom surrounded by other kingdoms and cities. All territories lived as allies, trading, exchanging, helping one another.

Then a lord named Claudius 'Scar' Dane decided to expand his kingdom, he demanded the submission of every territory surrounding his. When his demands were met with refusals he resolved to get what he wanted using force; within the next year the first Great War broke out. Several kingdoms and territories fell under Scar's dictatorship.

After five years of intense conflict, the war ended, the losses were important and many lives were taken. It was then that Arendelle and its surrounding territories first made a coalition. They had fought for the same thing, defeated Scar and they were ready to do everything in their powers to preserve what they had left.

Arendelle had been the strongest of the kingdoms standing. Maybe it was because of their leadership, maybe it was because of their resources or their forces, but Arendelle had suffered very little losses in comparison to the others.

As a result Arendelle practically reconstructed every territories around, in return they swore allegiance to Arendelle. It is Elsa's understanding that her parents who were then the rulers didn't enforce a domination policy but rather treated every new ally as their equals. Thaddeus Arendelle, her father, believed that the greatest things were achieved with respect and consideration of the people surrounding you. He therefore agreed to let all the allies keep their independence, seeing their alliance as a simple promise to help one another when times call for it.

Fifteen years went by before a new threat appeared under the features of Shan Yu. Successor of Scar, he rebuilt an army and pick up his predecessor's plans right where they had been left off.

The threats were taken seriously immediately and it was then that the allies requested to be completely assimilated to Arendelle making one unified kingdom rather than a kingdom divided in independent territories. The second Great Conflict broke out after two years of negotiations – Elsa had been fifteen by then with a year of army training and another of experience on the field under her belt.

That year of experience had been a fast lane up the chain of command. She had learnt under fire, quite literally. It had helped that she was one of the Gifted, as the people with powers were referred to. In the end the army had turned into a blessing for she could exploit her powers, let them go, and she was not good on the field, she was brilliant. So when the second Great War broke out, she was leading alongside her parents.

That war was worse than the first. Shan Yu was a better strategist than Scar had been, he was also more vicious and relentless. It was then that the first generation of sentinels and pitchers appeared.

Underprepared and lacking knowledge to face the new threats Arendelle found itself untangled in a conflict it couldn't handle. It was four long years before the war came to an end.

Four long years they had fought valiantly but lost territories after territories; four long years until they could gather the manpower, the knowledge and resources necessary to come up with the ultimate battle plan, the one that would work or force them to capitulate.

That battle plan led them to live the longest five days of their lives. By day six, they had won the war, Elsa had lost her parents and inherited a Kingdom.

Once she finally took her position as the new Queen she decided not to disturbed the order already established by her parents, also she kept the Councils as they were mostly because when she accessed the throne she needed guidance and the people filling the room right now had the experience she was lacking. Another reason was that by ensuring the continuity of the Councils already in place, in a way it was like keeping her parents at her sides albeit in spirit.

The meeting went smooth like the other, they brushed quickly every important point, and Elsa was satisfied that the kingdom was in good shape and nothing was left to decay. She had been ruling for four years now and if the first year and half had been rough and mostly spent to rebuilt was the war had destroyed, Arendelle was now expending and had acquired a certain comfort and wealth.

"Your Majesty, if I may?"

Elsa held herself from sighing when Duke Weselton asked for her attention. He was one the eldest members of the council, also a General (not as highly ranked as she was) but those stripes had mostly been earned while sitting comfortably and a secured room far from the enemy lines.

The county of Weselton was the biggest territory that had been integrated to Arendelle; therefore Duke Weselton considered himself as more important than the other members of the council. He conveniently forgot the fact that he had lost his territory before the second Great Conflict because he had chosen to capitulate in front of the enemy in exchange for a hefty sum and had then come back begging Arendelle for asylum when the conflict erupted because evidently the wind hadn't blown his way.

If King Thaddeus and Queen Magdalena had been kind enough to accept him and conquered back the lost territories, they had stayed weary of him. Elsa's position hadn't strayed from her parents' on that matter, mostly because she remembered how during the second Great Conflict Lord Weselton had cowered from his duty and hadn't fought like all the heads of the Council had.

She had been taught to be diplomatic however, and even if she had very little esteem for the man (if at all), she couldn't kick him out for the advantage of hiding was to keep great resources intact and the territory of Weselton provided vast resources that Arendelle could not really spare at the time. Kicking the man out of the kingdom wouldn’t attract Elsa any favour and could stir unnecessary tension with the people who still saw Weselton as their leader.

"Yes, Lord Weselton?"

"I'd like to bring to your attention the necessity to restore the Silver Pavilion, as you know it is a cultural and historical piece of my land, in that regard, as with all great buildings, it is important to preserve it. The building need to be reinforce, the walls need work and fresh paint, as for the facade it needs a full renovation."

"I fully appreciate your request, but I have to refuse. Times are such that this request falls into a frivolous use of the Kingdom’s resources at the moment. My priorities go to the safety of the Kingdom, therefore this project will have to be put on hold for the time being."

"Majesty, the building is crumbling down, there is an urgency for action."

"If it was so urgent, you should have taken the matter to Kai sooner than this very meeting," Elsa dismissed him patiently.

"I refuse to deal with a subordinate when it is your responsibility to preserve the land in its entirety, as was agreed with the late King and Queen," the little man replied crisply with evident disdain. "I would have taken the matter to your attention months ago if you were not busy indulging yourself with constant frolics in the snow outside of the Kingdom."

The temperature of the room had started to drop at the word 'subordinate' and by the word 'frolics' everyone in the room had to make a conscious effort not to shiver.

Elsa sensed her temper rising but forced herself to calm down almost immediately when she felt her powers tingling her palms. She took a deep breath gaining control over herself, thus allowing the room to warm up again.

"Lord Weselton, the channels of communication haven't change for the past three decades, enough time for you to familiarize yourself with them, I'm sure. I do not mind freshening up your memory on that particular protocol but I shan't repeat myself on that matter ever again," Elsa spoke calmly, her anger simmering below the surface but controlled.

"Kai is not a _subordinate_ , he is the Royal Advisor and in my absence, while I am out defending the Kingdom's frontiers, ensuring the safety of my people and maintaining the peace, Kai is the regent. You may take any matter regarding the Kingdom to him, I trust that he will take the wisest decision and upon my return I shall review the matter myself. Is that clear?"

Elsa piercing blue eyes bore holes into the old Lord's head and if he was obviously peeved to have been called out, he had the good sense to hold back any further comments.

"Yes, it is, your Majesty," he replied instead, each word sounding like a teeth being pulled out.

Elsa kept staring at him with authority, not backing an inch. "One last thing. I may be young but I am the Queen of this Kingdom that is so kindly hosting you. I am the Queen and your ruler, you _will_ address me as such and pay me the respect I am due."

"Yes, your Majesty. I meant no offence."

"I'm sure you didn't," Elsa agreed politely even though she knew, as well as everybody else in the room, that Lord Weselton's attitude hadn't been an unfortunate slip.

She kept her eyes trained on the other man for another twenty seconds before returning her attention to the rest of the assemble. "If no other matter needs to be discussed, this Council is dismissed," she put an end to their meeting. "I thank you for your constant work and dedication to the Kingdom, it is greatly appreciated."

Save from Lord Weselton, the eleven remaining members of the Council thanked the Queen before making their exit.

"Pacha," Elsa called out a tall, bulky man at the opposite end of the table. "A moment please," she demanded then nodded in Kai's direction. The Royal Advisor disappeared behind a door to return shortly, escorting an officer.

By the time Pacha had come to her sides, Kai and the officer had joined them. "Pacha, I'd like you to meet Lieutenant General Fa Zhou."

Pacha’s family had once been the head of a small territory prior to the first Great Conflict, that small nation prided itself with agriculture and textile. When Pacha’s nation was absorbed into Arendelle, Pacha and his people were logically assigned to the cultivating fields. When the Second Conflict broke out almost all the culture had been lost. Pacha – who was in charge by then – and his teams had managed to cultivate rough almost unfertile soil with very little at their disposal, strategically handling the food resources and allowed all of Arendelle not to go hungry during that time of extreme needs.

“Fa Zhou, this Pacha the head of the farming section of Arendelle,” Elsa beamed at the young man.

In a way Pacha and her had had the same journey. They were the same age, at fifteen she was leading charges during the second Great Conflict, while he found himself leader of the farming teams left to organize the survival of the entire Kingdom. They also share the particularity to have lost their parents to the war, Pacha at the beginning of the conflict and Elsa at the end of it.

“It is an honour to meet you, Lieutenant” Pacha greeted the older man with a very firm handshake and a smile. Farming was a physically demanding job and it showed on Pacha’s frame.

“The honour is all mine, your name comes with a choir of praises so it’s good to be able to finally put a face on it,” Zhou replied.

“As I’ve mentioned to you, Pacha has really innovating ideas regarding the recycling of the water and the development of the winter greenhouses. Since it is your area I thought the two you would gain from working together,” Elsa explained the reason behind their introduction.

“I have no doubt about it. You can start by telling me more about those innovations of yours if you have some time now I’ll be more than happy to hear it,” Lieutenant Fa addressed Pacha with his ever benevolent tone.

“Of course,” Pacha nodded and the two men decided to head back to Zhou’s office in order to talk.

When the door finally closed and she was alone with Kai, Elsa exhaled deeply. She looked at Kai and felt like she was five and caught at fault, she straightened herself out, mentally reminding herself that she was an adult and what’s more she was the one in charge.

“I know what you’re going to say. I shouldn’t have lost my temper with Weselton, it was a trivial matter. I know that as much as I hate it he’s an asset to Arendelle and upsetting him could stir trouble. I do understand that my slight burst might have made a chink in the diplomatic dike, but really, that…”

She immediately tightened her jaw to censor herself just in time. “That… self-important little man is lucky I didn’t freeze his tongue for speaking to me like he did.”

She had wanted to say ‘pretentious petulant pompous prick’ but even to this day swearing in Kai’s presence felt like a forbidden action that could earn her bottom a spanking from Gerda, and she had no desire whatsoever to experience that again (her behind remembered vividly every single one it had received as few as they were, thank you very much).

“It’s not my pride talking, I know without the shadow of a doubt that he’d have never taken such liberty with either of my parents. He barely respects me if at all, I can’t let such a thing slide,” she took a deep breath and held her chin up in defiance. “All this to say that I will not apologize to the man nor do any gesture that could be constructed as an apology,” she said firmly.

Kai kept a straight face as per usual. Kai’s greatest skills were his ability to be like a shadow, and his ability never to let anything betray his emotion. That latter skill being the one that always make Elsa confess any mischief she had ever done or was about to do.

He should probably have stopped Elsa’s rant immediately but there wouldn’t have been any fun in that, so he let her rant away (laughing hysterically inwardly).

Truth to be told he was extremely proud of his little girl (Queen or not, Elsa would always be his little girl). He was not a fan of Duke Weselton, not anymore than Elsa was.

Weselton had always been a point of tension between King Thaddeus, Queen Magdalena and Kai, if they all agreed never to refuse providing help to any nation asking for it, but when it came to Weselton there was an argument.

Duke Weselton did not have a single loyal bone in his body. Queen Magdalena had underlined the fact that a man able to put a price on his nation could not be trusted. If Weselton could be bought then there was no guarantee that he would not sell Arendelle out at the first chance. The Queen was adamant about refusing to provide asylum and help to Weselton and the fact that the man had had the gall to demand guarantees (as if he wasn’t begging for heir mercy and protection to begin with) had only set her mind more firmly on the matter.

King Thaddeus agreed but was more concerned about the people under the rule of Weselton, those women, men and children hadn’t chosen to capitulate, it was unfair for them to suffer because of the greed and cowardice of their leader.

Even though Kai had sided with the Queen on the matter, ultimately they had put their faith on King Thaddeus’ decision to accept Weselton in Arendelle and provide their protection.

They were at war and having someone as fickle as Duke Weselton in their Kingdom was a risk, especially when the possibility of Weselton being cahoots with Shan–Yu was real; but Thaddeus had reasoned that keeping him close was the wisest choice.

Since the end of war, Weselton had despised having to submit to Arendelle but he had despised even more the fact that someone as young as Elsa – woman on top of that – had more power than he did.

If it was up to Kai that spineless, pretentious old man would have 'accidentally' tripped and broke his neck in stairs a long time ago. That old fart had always treated him like he was a butler, so to see Elsa put him back in place had been a truly enjoyable vision.

Elsa anxiously waited for Kai’s reaction, holding her breath. Kai who had been lost in thought almost forgot that the young Queen was waiting for his say on the matter.

“Actually I just wanted to let you know that I had taken the liberty to ask Gerda to prepare you a late lunch, she should be here soon.”

Elsa was taken aback and looked at the man suspiciously. "Oh," was her eloquent reply.

"Also, to answer your query, Hades is training in the arena 6."

"Good, I'm going to pay him a visit."

"After eating, it goes without saying," though it was said in passing Elsa knew when to recognize an order.

"I am almost 23 and the Queen," she stated. "… that means you can’t ground me anymore," she wished she could sound less uncertain right now because those were facts after all. Kai simply looked at her in a nonplussed way which made Elsa cave in almost immediately. "I'm going to eat before leaving… let it be said that it's because I'm hungry, not because you said so."

"Of course, Majesty."

Kai nodded and turned around to retreat, the words 'not a kid, eat if I want to' were petulantly mumbled but sounded crystal to his perfect hearing. He swallowed the chuckle bubbling in the back of his throat for Elsa's attitude could be endearing at times. He turned around upon remembering something.

"Cockalorum," he simply declared with a tilt of his head, once again pulling the rug from under her feet.

"I beg your pardon?" Elsa blinked.

"Self–important little man: cockalorum," he explained. "And no, I didn't just make it up," he added with a soft grin. He gave her a tiny nod before exiting the room.

After a few seconds Elsa could feel a smile on her lips, she liked that new word.

**ooOoo**

"Hey, are you…" before she could finish her sentence, Anna was propelled six feet in the air and landed painfully on the ground. She didn't have time to register pain when she felt a hand grip the collar of her suit and lift her up like she was as light as a feather.

"Sunfield, do you know why I just blasted you?"

Anna was trying to regain her bearings, having the dark green eyes of her TO burning holes in her skull wasn't helping. At all.

She tried to focus and couldn't think of a single thing to say. Hades' patience (if he ever had had any) flew out of the window.

"What were you doing?" her queried slowly, giving her one last chance to understand her mistake on her own.

"I was… helping…" she stammered.

"Did he ask for your help?" Hades cut her off.

"N… no but…"

"Then why the hell were you at his sides?!" Hades bellowed, startling Anna.

"Radio contact was lost and I…" Anna mumbled hurriedly.

Hades let her go, clearly not interested in her reasons and she stumbled to stay on her feet.

He took a deep breath and walked a few feet away. "Gather around and stand at attention, please," though his voice was loud enough to be heard loud and clear by the forty eight recruits scattered around the arena, Hades' tone was soft, amiable as if they were about to share pleasantries. That tone was enough to send a chill down every recruit's spine.

"Come on, now, hustle up," Hades encouraged with two claps of his hands.

They quickly gathered forming six rows of eight persons aligned perfectly one behind the other with enough space for Hades to move in between.

They had learnt a lot during the past six weeks, and they had learnt it fast for their survival to that training relied solely on those titbits of knowledge.

For example, it was better to have Hades shouting than having him talk with the friendly voice he was currently using. Hades' screams translated mild irritation whereas a friendly tone translated fury (ironically enough) and the promise of excruciatingly painful consequences.

This was the reason why at that very moment they were all overcome with a sense of dread at what was to come.

Another thing they had learnt, there was absolutely no limit to the pain Hades could make them endure. Every time they thought he had pushed them to their limits, he pushed further. Every time they thought things could not get harder, tougher or worse, he proved them wrong (and not in a pleasant way).

Hades had been right on their first day upon saying that Hell was a sweet place compared to his training. Hades' training was a bottomless pit of hurt and despair, so much so that almost two quarters of them had quit under the pressure.

Hades was merciless, his teaching was grinding on a physical and psychological level. More than once Anna had considered quitting for this time around, but each time she had chased the idea thinking that she had already suffered too much to get to that point just to give up so close to the end. She also reminded herself that if she gave up then she would left Kristoff and Sven behind and that was just unconceivable.

Anna didn't mind the physical exertion, yes the constant pain in her body was wearing her out, but muscles could build resistance as time went. If she was honest it was the psychological stress that was her main problem, the fact that Hades had seemingly chosen her as his favourite target didn't help.

Once they were all in front of him, Hades' soft voice filled the air again. "Sunfield," he started and Anna clenched her jaw, hating to be called out yet again. "Unlike what you may think the goal of this training is to turn you into soldiers, not baby–sitters," Hades paused. "Your empathy is commendable and… wipe that smirk off YOUR FACE, AGRABA!!"

As his voice suddenly increased in volume Hades was making a straight line to his target, his shoulder connected bluntly with a few recruits (who promptly took back their position as if nothing had happened). He only stopped his course when he was inches away from Aladdin, his eyes filled with unconcealed anger.

Aladdin had been smirking at Anna for yet another stupid mistake, now that he could feel Hades' hot breath on his face and those green eyes were burning holes in his cranium, fear had chased away his amusement.

"The next time that happens, I'll be the one wiping it off for you," Hades spoke through clenched teeth. "And trust me son it will not be a painless experience. Is that clear?"

Aladdin gulped audibly. "Sir yes, Sir."

Hades pinned the young man down with his eyes several more seconds before making his way back to the front, once again connecting with recruits and once again said recruits immediately got back in line.

He took a deep breath, and the friendly, fatherly tone returned. "As I was saying, Sunfield, your empathy is commendable but you must understand that it doesn't have a place on the field."

He paced slowly in front of them, the movement was both unnerving and hypnotic. He made his way to Anna and stood in front of her. "In a perfect world, missions and plans would be adjusted to your every whim. Unfortunately this is reality," he winced. "In reality, it is not okay for you to stray from the elaborated plan because something goes amiss. In reality, when by minute twelve of an exercise you're supposed to be standing next to a flag, then by minute twelve I want you standing next to a flag no matter what happens. Do you understand?"

"Sir yes, Sir!" Anna immediately replied.

Hades nodded. "Good," he walked away so he could face them all again. "You are working in teams. It means that your team mates trust you to do your part of the job and you entrust them to do theirs. If you need help, ask for it. However, you must keep in mind that you have a mission to accomplish and every decision you make will impact it. The mission comes first, your well being comes second."

He marked a pause to let his words sink in. "This is training, so we'll repeat the exercise as many times as needed for you to understand those principles," he chortled.

There it was, the guarantee that whatever was about to come next would be worse than anything before.

"On the field, repetition is a luxury you do not have. On the field, the stakes are higher than breaking a new time record or winning the position of leader for a day," he rubbed his hands together. "On the field, every mistake might cost your life or the one of your team mates’, and a failed mission is an opportunity for the enemy to attack our Kingdom and that is unacceptable. The mission comes first, your well–being second, is that clear?"

"Sir yes, Sir!" the recruits responded with the same voice.

"Very well," Hades smiled. "Let's take it from the top."

Hades grabbed an electronic pad sliding his finger on the surface to send new mission data to the recruits' HopeComs. "Take it all in and get in position, quickly."

They were divided in three teams of sixteen, at Hades' go they all split to get to their assigned position on the map. Fifteen minutes into the exercise each team was isolated.

"Gate is ahead, 20 minutes to neutralization," Merida Dunbroch's voice came through Anna's HopeComs. "We're clear to…"

The communication was suddenly shut. "Merida?" Anna called. "Merida? Do you copy?"

There was noise behind her, Anna turned around and before she could comprehend what was happening she was blasted violently. Anna tried to focus quickly to assess the situation, she was surprised to see Hades' figure standing next to her, hovering. She didn't dwell on it and struggled to get up again in order to rush toward her fallen WeapGen.

Hades kicked her instantly, she felt two of her ribs crack under her training officer's boot, before falling on a heap on the floor. She rolled over just in time to avoid another kick and stood up with difficulty. Hades didn't give her time to adjust to the pain launching into a fight immediately.

She could taste blood filling her mouth rapidly, though she gave all she had to defend herself she didn’t get many kicks in. She was no match, he was faster and stronger, not to mention that he was using his fire powers to burn her as he hit her. Hades stopped her next punch grabbing her right arm and snapped it with very little effort, bringing their fight (it was a beating more than anything else) to an abrupt end. The shock of pain cut her breathing momentarily, when she expelled air out of her lungs a yelp of pain filled the air.

She fell onto her knees and barely avoided completely crashing on her face by supporting the weight of her body with her left arm at the last moment. She crawled to move away but she could feel her left arm wavering so she managed to get onto a sitting position, facing Hades, trying to move backward away from him. Eventually she couldn't move anymore, pain paralysing her.

Hades crouched down to be at eye level with her. He looked at his watch. "Nineteen minutes," he announced. "Bad news, Sunfield, your whole team has been decimated, you're the only one left to carry out the mission."

Anna was trying to breathe, the searing pain in her arm superseding the overall agony of her body, making it hard for her to process any new information. She could see her bone poking out just below the skin, the sickening visual doubling the pain.

She moved her left arm to get a signal out to the other team but with a mere movement of his fingers Hades set it aflame briefly. "And now your HopeComs is dead as well."

This was her punishment for her previous mistake. She knew it. She had been expecting retribution but it never occurred to her that Hades would have made it a personal one. Usually, he treated them as a team, if one messed up then they all paid for it.

Of course, it could be discussed that Anna's team had paid for her mistake since Hades had taken her fifteen team mates down in a matter of seconds, but she assumed (rightly so) that Hades had wiped them off quickly and painlessly.

"What are you going to do now?" Hades asked calmly.

Puke.

That's the first word that came into her mind as a silent answer to the query and she was sure she would do just that very soon.

She couldn't form a thought, she was only acutely aware of her laboured breath because of her two cracked ribs, of the sizzling sensation in her arm, of the burning spots of flesh under her suit and of the sweat pearling profusely from her forehead.

She closed her eyes to try and distract her mind but her eyes snapped opened when she felt a sharp sting against her right cheek. "Stay with me Sunfield, now is not the time to go to your happy place," the reprimand was firm but made in a gentle tone.

Hades looked at his watch again. "Seventeen minutes. You need to think of a way to neutralize that gate."

Anna was focusing on her breathing, she needed her brain to fire up but it was just not happening. In fact she could not think past the word pain and its variation.

Hades was watching her, patiently waiting. When he spoke his voice was poised for he was teaching her something. He wanted her to learn that she may find herself in delicate positions and when that happens she would need to sort out her priorities and think quickly.

"I've just beaten and burnt the shit out of you, I've cracked your ribs, and snapped your arm in two, accept the fact that pain won't pass any time soon. You are hurt, not dying, so relay your body's voice to a background noise."

Hades tone was even so as not to add to her distress. "Sunfield, I need you to focus on the stakes at hand. The mission comes first."

Anna nodded shakily, though she was still unable to speak, it was the first sign that she was assimilating his words.

"In sixteen minutes an army of pitchers and sentinels will come out of that gate, they will attack the other teams from behind, catching them all off guard. Those teams will fight back but they will be outnumbered and wiped off in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately for you in this scenario you were the last line of defence, so once the enemies are done killing you off they will get to the kingdom adding to the death count."

Anna moaned when the ache in her arm doubled again, her head started to drop but Hades grabbed her chin, once again forcing her to look at him. "Focus, right here," he ordered firmly, still not uttering a word above the other. "Again, you are hurt not dying. Calm down, take a deep breath and start using that brain of yours because right now it's the most powerful weapon you have at your disposal."

The redhead took deep breath and visualized her pain as a person that way she could tell it to zip it while she thought.

Zip it…

That was it.

A zip line would be the fastest way to reach that gate.

**ooOoo**

" _Alpha one this is Alpha three, do you copy?_ "

"Go ahead, Alpha three," Mulan replied to the leader of the other team, Jack-Jack.

" _I can't reach Alpha two, do you get anything?_ "

"Stand by," Mulan asked then switched channel. "Alpha two this is Alpha one, do you copy?" she waited ten seconds before repeating the call. "Alpha two this is Alpha one, do you copy?"

After being met with silence again she switched channel back to Jack-Jack’s. "Negative, Alpha three," she informed the other leader.

" _I have no read on any of their HopeComs,_ ” Jack-Jack continued.

Mulan immediately used her own device to see if she had a signal, but as expected she didn’t either. “Ah, cuff a duck…” she swore punctuating each word. “No read either, last transmission was four minutes ago.”

“ _Radio contact is dead, no HopeComs signal_ ,” Jack-Jack summed up. “ _How many chances for this to be a coincidence are there?_ ”

“Just about as many as there are for wings to sprout out of my back in the next five seconds.”

“ _A lad can dream_ ," he sighed. " _Besides wings would look badass on you_ ,” the younger man joked after a pause.

“Shut up, Parr,” Mulan managed not to let a chortle escape her throat.

“What’s the hold up?” Kristoff asked Mulan, they had almost reached their gate and needed Mulan to give them directives, but her mind was obviously elsewhere.

“We lost contact with Alpha two,” she informed him.

“Ah, what a shock, Spaz’s team is failing again,” Aladdin scoffed.

“Why don’t you keep your mouth shut for once?” Kristoff immediately replied.

“Hey, that’s enough!” Mulan intervened immediately.

“What do we do?" Kristoff asked.

"Nothing," Mulan declared after a short pause. When she saw Kristoff about to protest she continued. "Soldier not baby–sitter, ring a bell?"

"Dude…"

"We're going to do our job which is neutralizing that gate, and assume everything is fine on their side," she ordered.

“What if they are in trouble?” another recruit asked.

“If they were they’d have find a way to send a distress signal,” Mulan reasoned.

“There are sixteen of us, don’t you want to spare, I don’t know, two persons to go and check?” someone else suggested.

“No,” Mulan stood her ground. “Until we get a signal, they are fine. Now we are going to secure the gate like we should.”

“But…”

“I’m not sparing anyone because I need all the manpower available for that gate. Let’s not waste any more time, move out,” she put an end to the argument.

She didn’t honestly think that the others were fine. It wasn’t so much the lack of radio contact that made her feel uneasy, it was the impossibility to get a signal from any of the HopeComs. Those devices seldom failed, except if the suit took a blunt attack, such as fifty thousand volts, but then again the HopeComs were to automatically reinitialised in two minutes.

The last signal she had was four minutes ago, meaning the HopeComs had completely failed. The fact that sixteen HopeComs had decided to fail at the same moment made it even more suspicious.

She wanted nothing more than turn around and go check things out for herself, but she knew that her decision was the right one. This was training, Hades liked nothing more than to enforce his teaching with practical example, whatever was happening on Alpha two’s side was nothing more than the illustration of the fact that the mission came first no matter what.

First, her team would take care of the gate, once that would be done she’d divide it in two, one team to stay at the gate the other to provide help to the team Alpha two.

She could only hope that whatever was happening to Merida’s team was manageable. Maybe Alpha two wasn’t the one put to test, maybe they were, maybe Hades was just waiting to see who would be fool enough to go on an unrequested rescue mission. Maybe Alpha two was perfectly fine and it was only a HopeComs malfunction… on sixteen devices at the same time.

Yeah… and that wasn't a chill she felt running down her spine, just her wings slowly forming.

**ooOoo**

“The nightshade _Solanum lycopersicum_ is commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated…”

Anna was reciting out loud an exposé on the tomato she had done in class when she was eight, not because she felt hungry or needed distraction but in order to keep track of time. Hades had destroyed her HopeComs, when she had finally sprung into action he had informed her she had fifteen minutes left to complete her mission, her brain had latched onto her tomato exposé for some reason. Back then she had rehearsed with Kristoff and Sven so it was exactly three minutes long, not a second less, not a second more. She had repeated it too many times to count, giving a certain rhythm to her words to fit that time frame. Anna had a great memory as a general rule, so that exposé was nothing short of seared into her brain.

She was at the beginning of the second recitation meaning that three minutes had elapsed.

She was about to get herself down from the small plateau where she had been with her team. She had needed four minutes to snap out of it and get into action. Once her brain had started firing up again it was like she had received an electric shock, her mind was buzzing with the thing she needed to do and adrenaline was being pumped furiously into her system. She was so focused on keeping track of the time and what she had to do that she could make abstraction of the pain (sort of).

The difficult part was to keep thinking while talking about tomatoes. She had difficulty setting the zip line because she had only one arm and a half working. She had had to use her bow to tense the line, her right arm was broken also every movement was a small torture, lucky her she didn't need to aim precisely.

Once the line was set, she grabbed the metallic rope and closed her left fist on it, she squeezed the rope to trigger the safety mechanism on her glove that would ensure she didn't to accidentally drop herself two hundred feet. She was thankful for small favours considering she could only use one hand the chances for accidents were high.

She jumped to hook her leg on the rope and immediately started her descent.

“There are around seventy thousand and five hundred tomato varieties. The tomato can be traced back as far as the Aztecs and other people in Mesoamerica who…”

She kept her body rigid the whole time, so much so that her muscles were screaming by the time she reached the ground.

There a hundred feet away from her stood a building with on its front a thirty feet tall steel gate. Anna approached her target and slowly realized that something was odd. She had noticed two low walls, thirteen feet wide and four feet tall, spaced about fifty feet from one another. As she stepped closer to the door she noticed that two identical low walls were on her right as well as on her left, with the building in front of her they formed some square of sort.

She felt her stomach slowly drop for the closer she got the less it looked like the gate and building were connected. In fact the gate stood in the middle of the square.

“There are debates as to whom of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés or the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus first introduced … crap…”

She lost track of the tomato exposé when she reached the gate. Gates came in different shape and worked differently, months of training and studying of every single military data allowed her to identify any kind of gates she was facing in a second. Right now she wasn’t facing just any gate, it was a portal gate.

Portal gates where like doors planted in the middle of nowhere. They were made of steel, eighty inches thick with no knobs of any kind. They were remotely activated. Somewhere there was a room holding a programming system and an indoor portal gate; whoever passed through the activated indoor portal gate would exit by a portal gate like the one Anna was currently facing.

Generally there would be several portal gates scattered around an area, it was a fast way to get from one point to another. Arendelle had several outposts that had been used during both wars, some had been condemned and others were always in activity.

Inactive portal gates needed to be sealed and then blasted in order to be neutralized. Normally thick steel metal plates would be used to completely cover each side of the gate, the inward face of each plates containing tiny but powerful plasma charges, then the plates would be sealed with blowtorches to each other and then to the portal gate. Once the sealing was fully hermetical then the charges of plasma would be detonated to completely destroy the mechanism of the gate.

That operation would take up to twenty minutes, several people would generate the thick steel plates and setting charges, several people would hold the plates still while others would use their blowtorches to do the sealing.

Anna felt panic slowly taking her into a tight chokehold, despair twisting her guts. She didn’t have the RMG – raw material generator – to make the steel plates (one of her team mates was carrying it), and even if she had had the RMG in her possession she’d never have the time to seal that gate with the few minutes she had to spare.

The gate would activate no matter what so she’d have to neutralize it then, but that means she’d face at least sentinels if she was lucky, if she wasn’t she’d have to face pitchers and if she was really unlucky she’d have to face both.

She could hold her own on a good day and with all her limbs intact.

She was screwed. Fear was overwhelming and she almost let out a sob but caught herself at the last second. She balled her fists on reflex and the immediate pain tearing her right arm snapped her out of her mini meltdown.

“Focus Anna,” she ordered herself and shook her head.

Anger was taking over, bypassing any other feeling. She had just lost time with her mini meltdown, she didn’t know if it was seconds or a minute but she decided to assume that she had more or less six minutes left. She took a deep breath, her mind finally cleared up and she quickly sorted out what she had to do and in what order.

First she had to send a signal to the other teams, she wouldn’t hold that gate long by herself (if at all).

She tried to keep her reasoning methodical, not dwelling on what was going to happen.

Hades had destroyed her HopeComs but lucky for her (or maybe he had done it on purpose) he had left her ammunition generator intact. She used her WeapGen to materialize her bow and created an arrow with her AmGen. She fixed a plasma puck to it with a bit of metal thread she had used to make a zip line then activated the puck. She gritted her teeth at the pain in her right arm as she tensed the cord while aiming at the sky. She loosened the arrow and watched it blow up a few seconds later.

“The nightshade _Solanum lycopersicum_ is commonly known as the tomato plant…” she picked up her exposé from the start moving quickly to the gate and putting her plan in motion.

**ooOoo**

Mulan’s head snapped in the direction of the area where Alpha two was supposed to be when she heard a detonation half second before a small explosion tore the sky.

She had been ordering her team around as they were securing the gate, in all honesty the job at hand was amounted to guarding a gate and hope nothing came out of the factory hidden behind the closed door. The must they could do was to look around and see if there was any threat at all.

Even though she had been focusing on the task at hand but she had been on edge ever since they had lost contact with Alpha two. She had kept an eye on the area behind her team, the one where Alpha two was supposed to be.

She had been expecting a signal of any kind and at the same time fervently wished for it not to happen.

“ _Alpha one…_ ”

“I saw it,” she cut off Jack-Jack immediately anticipating his question, then turned back to her team. “Kristoff, Sven, Aladdin, you’re with me,” she reacted quickly. “The rest of you stay here guarding that gate, nothing comes through it, understood?” her voice was firm and authoritative. “Woody, take the lead while I’m gone, I want permanent radio contact and word on what’s going on,” she waited for the curt nod of her team mate then launched into a frantic run toward the signal as fast as she could, the three other men hot on her tail. “Let’s go!”

She was dreading what they’d find.

She wished wings had sprouted from her back, at least she’d go faster. Right now, no matter how fast they were they’d still need at least five minutes to reach their destination.

Two minutes were a lifetime, so five minutes…

Whatever was going on she could only hope that Alpha two would be able to hold long enough for her and her team mates to reach them.

**ooOoo**

Hades watched attentively as Anna slowly found a solution to her problem.

He had been a bit thrown off when she had started to talk about tomato as she finally got her head back on her mission. At first he figured it was her way to distract herself from her injuries, but when she started the whole speech from the top three minutes after the first time he quickly figured by the way she forced herself to speak at certain rhythm that it was her unconventional way of keeping track of time.

He had joined her down but kept a safe distance, observing completely unnoticed by the redhead. He saw the exact moment it dawned on her that the gate would open no matter what she did and could feel her distress when she understood that she was alone to face the inevitable.

It was fascinating to watch her push through and trying the impossible. That was the point of the training, for them to understand that they'd always have to push through an obstacle be it physical pain or concrete problem. They needed to learn when to take initiatives, they needed to learn to think outside of the proverbial box and figure out how to reach their goal no matter what was thrown their way.

Anna Sunfield had immediately stirred his interest as well as his frustration. He knew the others wanted to be there, they had their drive, but he couldn't say the same about the redhead. She was a good recruit there was no denying that, but most of the time she seemed to forget that she was training to be a soldier, that eventually the training would end and soon she would be on the field.

The problem with that was that it made her an easy target. He had one job and it was to make sure they would be ready to face the real dangers outside of the kingdom and Sunfield was not ready, even after all those months of training.

He was frustrated because she had a lot of potential but it was left untapped most of the time because she didn't have that drive. She was doing what she needed to in order to keep up with the others but that was it.

When she had made the mistake to deviate from her mission just to check on her team mate his frustration had skyrocketed. He decided to teach her a lesson the hard way. If it is true that her potential stayed untapped most of the time, she would always pull through and dig into it when in extreme situations.

In that optic, he had hurt her just enough to impair her movements, without having her passing out. For a moment he thought that he wouldn't get through to her and that he'd have to stop the exercise. If such had been the case he probably would have dropped her from the training altogether.

If she hadn't gotten her wits back he would have known there and then that she wasn't ready to face something other than training, at least not this time around.

Now, with five minutes left before the portal gate opened, he watched her setting a plan in motion to neutralize the gate as best as she could with as little as she had.

**ooOoo**

Mulan checked her HopeComs to have an estimation of their distance from Alpha two. They hadn't slowed down in the past five minutes but it felt like they were not moving at all, yet her device told her that they were still a thousand hundred feet away.

" _Alpha one…_ " Jack–Jack's voice trailed off. She didn't have a chance to ask what he was about to say when she felt it a deep vibration shaking the floor, palpable energy emerging from an unknown source.

"What was that?" Kristoff asked.

Mulan clenched her jaw and dug deeper to double her pace again. She could only think of one thing with that energy signature and it wasn't good. Not good at all.

"Alpha three, get ready we may face hostile devices," she gave the heads up to Jack–Jack.

They had agreed on joining Alpha two with only three people each, not knowing what the rescue might entitled and not able to completely left their gate unprotected.

" _You don't think it was…_ "

"Yes, yes that’s exactly what it was," she cut off the young man.

"Shit."

She instinctively grabbed both her WeapGens, anticipating what weapons she would soon use.

**ooOoo**

Anna had climbed the gate using a grapple iron, she had grunted her tomato exposé all the way up having to use both arms to go as fast as possible. Once on the top of the door she had stuck an electro puck on one corner of the gate before going to the opposite corner to put another puck but this time on the other side of the gate.

She set them to activate in five minutes. She knew the gate would open in two, but with what she had at her disposal she would need energy from the gate itself for her plan to work.

Once she was certain the pucks were properly set she made her way back down and checked the two other pucks she had set at the foot of the door on the diagonal of the one above.

The gate would open to generate a portal, the energy deployed would increased the force of the four electro–pucks when those would activate, producing an overflow of energy that would start to destroy the mechanism of the gate. When the pucks activate she'd have to try and blast the gate to completely put it out of use.

There was a major downside to that plan, it was that she'd have to hold off whatever came through the gate for three minutes.

She wasn't even sure that her signal had been seen, and if it had she knew that back up would most likely not be there on time to help her.

She quickly scanned the area and saw very little means to provide her cover besides the six low walls surrounding the gate so she would have to rely on her speed to stay alive long enough.

“There are debates as to whom of the…"

She stumbled backward when the gate came to life, shaking the ground and sending a powerful shockwave of energy. She was momentarily crippled by fear, she was so mesmerized by the watery appearance of the active portal that she almost failed to see the hostile device flying in, she regained her wit just in time to avoid the blast of the first sentinel coming out of the gate.

She ducked and generated her bow, the propped herself on one knee and aimed at the flying sentinel. The arrow damaged it but didn't destroy it so she shot another one right after finally getting the expected result.

Anna immediately ran to find cover behind the low wall on her right. She didn’t need to look to know that that other sentinels were about to pour out of the portal. She put that thought in the back of her mind, inhaled deeply and took a second to calm down.

She couldn’t run away, she had to stay at a reasonable distance from the gate because she needed to blast it with plasma-pucks the moment the electro-pucks would come to life and if her aim was good she could only throw that far.

She needed to contain the sentinels into the area, the only way she could do that was to keep their attention on her. That part wouldn’t be too difficult.

This was going to be nothing more than a giant game of hide and seek, she just needed to stay ahead of the game. She also needed to destroy as many sentinels as she could each time she attacked because she didn’t have much power by herself besides her WeapGens: four ice-pucks, three plasma-pucks (two of which she had to keep for the gate itself), two heat-pucks and two magnetic-pucks.

The redhead was shaking like a leaf but she forced her fear aside, closing her eyes for a second she blocked the world and focused on her breathing. She counted to three and felt a shift, her heartbeat slowed down and her senses heightened, something was grabbing hold of her, suddenly everything was clear, she knew what she had to do but above all she felt utterly calm.

She could hear the whistling of new sentinels and estimated that there were about six of them. She reached down her thigh and took a heat–puck, she put it against the wall behind her and waited five second for it to activate. Once the heat it generated was higher than her body temperature she ran to the low wall on her left, sliding on the ice slightly as she ducked again.

Like moths to a flame, the sentinels were attracted to heat and they converged toward the cover Anna had just left lured by the puck. The redhead took a second to adjust her position and shot two arrows destroying the sentinel in the middle of the small bundle, it exploded and destroyed the ones around it in a chain reaction.

The portal hurled more sentinels and the redhead waited until there was a small pack in the centre of the square. Sentinels were reconnaissance devices therefore had no real strategic intelligence. They stayed in pack which was Anna’s sole advantage at the moment. When they were a little more than a dozen she ran toward them threw an ice-puck, the ice formed rapidly trapping several devices at the same time, Anna materialised her gladius swords and shattered the frozen sentinels as they were losing the battle against gravity.

She jumped and rolled down to avoid the blasts from the sentinel who had escaped her attack. She threw another ice-puck and took six new devices down; she activated her two magnetic–pucks and dropped them a few feet away from the low wall she was running to.

She leaned against the wall a second to get her breathing under control then turned back toward the portal and looked above her cover. She threw her last heat-puck in front of her cover to attract the eight new sentinels in her direction, as soon as they were above the magnetic–pucks they were held in place by the electromagnetic force giving Anna just the few seconds of leisure to aim and hit her targets bulls eye.

She ducked to cover again and gritted her teeth, her right arm was throbbing from the extensive use and she had to force herself not to let go of her WeapGen.

When she looked at the square again she felt despair creeping in. The sentinels seemed to be breeding, the more she took out the more there were. The square was now filled with a swarm of sentinels. Anna reached for one plasma-puck and threw it at the centre of the packed devices, and almost smiled when she took at least two dozen. Instead of rejoicing though she felt colours drain from her face when the arm of a pitcher started to come out of the portal.

Her momentary distraction earned her a blast on her right shoulder from an incoming sentinel, sending her on the floor. She dropped one of her WeapGen upon impact and cursed herself. She got back on her feet and stumbled a bit as she reached out for her fallen weapon a few feet from her.

That small blunder had made her an easy target to the hostile device. She ran to the low wall on her right and made a sideway summersault to hide behind it quickly. She was about to generate her bow when part of the wall exploded on her right forcing her to move again.

She had lost her advantage she could feel blasts gazing her as she ran to cover but just before she reached another low wall it was pulverised in front of her. She kept running to find cover but she was too far from any of the low wall.

The destroyed sentinels were generating heat and a dark thick smoke providing Anna some cover to move around the square but it had the inconvenient to disorient her as well.

She threw another ice-puck at the sentinels in front of her but didn’t get a chance to finish them off as one giant mechanic arm swept her away, throwing her a few feet in the air. In the reigning chaos she had managed to lose sight of the pitcher.

She paid for that egregious oversight when she landed on her injured arm and her bone snapped again. A gut wrenching cry escaped her lips and she immediately rolled on her other side to stand even though pain was coming in white flashes behind her eyelids. She was lucky because the plasma blast the pitcher had sent her way missed her by inches (its aiming off courtesy of the smoke).

Anna stumbled back up and barely avoided the second incoming blast before she threw her last ice-puck at the pitcher impairing it completely. She didn’t have a second to breathe for she realised that the pitcher had sent her flying at the foot of the portal. She hurried to step away knowing that the electro-pucks would activate at any moment.

She barely moved ten feet away when she felt a surge of energy from behind her. She turned and saw the portal glowing with the additional charges of the electro-pucks. She reached for a plasma puck activated it then threw it at the centre of the portal.

The redhead had the second puck in her hand ready to be activated and thrown when the blast from an unseen sentinel behind her threw her forward making her drop the puck. She could hear the sentinel charging again and simply forced herself back up crawling quickly to retrieve the puck, she rolled forward to avoid the attack from the sentinel and found herself a bit closer to the portal. She activated the puck and threw it in.

The overwhelming power disrupted the portal and there was a sudden explosion of energy, the watery like matter of the portal spiked forward from both sides touching Anna. It was like being shocked and she flew backward.

The pitcher and all the sentinels around the portal were pulverised before the portal shut down completely.

**ooOoo**

When they finally reached the location of Alpha two, Mulan and the others were surprised with the chaotic sight greeting them. An active portal generating more energy than it should, sentinels, at least one pitcher and dark thick smoke coming from destroyed devices on the floor.

There was no sign of anyone from team Alpha two, and Mulan could see at least two dozen of sentinels scanning the area.

“How bad is it?” Jack-Jack’s breathless voice took her out of her contemplation. He was now standing next to her with three of his team mates. “What the heck is going on?”

“No idea, no time to wonder either,” she motioned the sentinels with her chin getting her weapon ready.

The flying devices registered their presence and immediately charged in their direction. Kristoff was the first to react sending his two axes spinning in the air, slicing two sentinels before calling back his weapons.

Mulan noticed that all but one sentinels had rushed in their direction. They just had time to destroy them before the portal exploded in a powerful surge of energy shaking the ground with enough force to make them lose their footing.

Mulan saw a single figure flying in the air in the distance. “What the…”

The figured crashed down before sliding a few feet across the floor after landing.

**ooOoo**

Anna came to ten seconds after defying gravity. She felt out of breath and hot, there was high pitch ringing in her ears and her head was spinning. She was completely disoriented also her movements were unsteady as she rolled on her left side and struggled to stand up again.

She looked in direction of the portal gate and only saw its broken frame, it was deactivated. It had worked, her plan had worked.

She winced and bent forward ready to fall over when she became aware of her body again. Now that she didn’t have to focus on something she was in full blown agony. She was in so much pain that she had to support herself by propping her left arm against her knee. She could swear that her right arm had doubled in size and she was ready to bet that it had a sickening shade of blue underneath her suit. She could taste blood and feel the warm liquid running on her face.

She was startled when she noticed Hades next to her. She straightened up as much as she could, it was not the mandatory stance but her body wouldn’t allow her much more.

“Welcome to the army, Sunfield,” there was a barely there grin playing on his lips.

Anna was shaking, the combination of her body screaming in agony and her adrenaline crashing made her double over and emptying her stomach right there on his shoes.

Once she realized what she had done she was mortified and could feel embarrassing (and unwanted) tears prickling her eyes. She straightened up again, an apology at the ready.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hades simply said dismissing whatever she was about to say. She wasn’t the first to get sick after being pushed to an extreme, he didn’t look her down for it.

She had impressed him, he hadn’t really expected her to succeed, in all honesty though he expected excellence he would have been satisfied with her work even if her plan had failed because she had given it all with very little to her advantage.

She had held a portal gate on her own for four minutes (not three) and managed to neutralize it by herself. Sure, unbeknownst to her, she had received a little help with the last sentinels from both delegations of the teams Alpha one and three, but making the tabs she had destroyed fifty eight sentinels and a pitcher while being physically impaired.

During the last fifteen minutes she had proven that not only she belonged in the army but that her potential exceeded his expectations when put to use. Now Hades knew that when she finds her drive she’d be on fast tracks to become an elite soldier.

Anna was scared because the expression on her training officer’s face was something akin to gentleness, when he spoke his voice was soft, caring.

“Do you need me to carry you?"

The redhead stared at Hades thinking that she was having a pain induced hallucination. She was hurt and her body threatened to give into exhaustion, in fact she was certain she'd fall any second from now. The thought of being carried was pleasant but at the same time it stung. As enticing as it was the idea also felt utterly wrong.

She shook her head.

"Are you sure?" Hades pushed gently. The exercise was over and as far as he was concerned she didn't have anything to prove to him right now.

Once again she replied with a movement of her head. She didn’t mean to disrespect her superior, she was just afraid to vomit again if she opened her mouth.

Hades kept scrutinizing her. “Do you think you can walk yourself back to the HQ and to a caisson?”

It suddenly dawned on Anna that Hades' tone wasn't the quiet one promising incoming vicious pain but rather one she had never heard from the man, one laced with genuine care.

She nodded slightly. She swallowed audibly and took a few deep breaths before attempting to speak. “I’m hurt… not dying,” she replied. As battered and as tired as she was, she didn't want to appear like a damsel in distress, she was a soldier after all.

Hades snorted, greatly amused by her cheek “Good girl,” He nodded with satisfaction. He stepped a bit closer so that his voice was a low whisper when he spoke again. "Stupendous job, Sunfield," Anna was convinced she was delirious when a grin flashed on Hades' lips. "Don't ever let it get to your head though," he added seriously.

"Yes, sir," she acquiesced. There was very little chance for her to let it get to her head. The only thing she could think about right now wasn't the fact that she had beaten the odds and managed to neutralize the portal gate. The only thing her mind retained from the past few minutes was the fact that she had just puked on her training officer. No matter what, she knew that it was the only clear memory she'd ever have of that training day.

Hades patted her gently on the cheek, almost with pride. "Go on," he encouraged her with a tilt of his head in direction of the headquarters. She nodded once more and started her journey every step more painful than the one preceding it.

**ooOoo**

"Woody, report on the situation," Mulan demanded as soon as all the sentinels were down.

" _Gate is secured, no sign of activity_."

The young Asian turned to Jack–Jack and waited for him to have a feedback about his gate. "No sign of activity on our end," he informed her.

At least they had contained the threat, Mulan mused.

“Am I the only one to wonder why there’s only Sunfield around?” Jack-Jack broke the silence.

Once they had destroyed their sentinels, they saw Hades walking to whoever had flown after the explosion of the gate, it turned out to be Anna.

"Chances are she got her whole team killed. The gate being opened was just her best fuck up yet."

"So help me Aladdin…" Kristoff started, this time he would deck the other man.

"Enough!" Mulan intervened.

"I'm just saying," Aladdin defended himself. "There's no sign of Alpha two except for Spaz over there and we just walked into a mess. That was a simple and logical deduction. I don't care what Blondie thinks, Spaz has a rather high screw up ratio."

Sven held Kristoff back and shook his head.

"I said, enough!" Mulan repeated.

"Heads up, everyone," Jack–Jack interrupted them sharply when he saw Hades coming their way.

“Fa, Parr,” Hades called. Mulan and Jack-Jack immediately stood at attention as their TO approached. “Small delegation for assistance, good call. How are your gates?”

“East Gate neutralized and protected, Sir,” Mulan informed.

“West Gate neutralized and protected, Sir,” Jack-Jack echoed.

“Good. Go get your team back and return to the headquarters, this exercise is over.”

“Yes, Sir!” both recruits replied at the same time.

"Let's move out team!" Mulan called her men and turned back around to return to her team mates.

**ooOoo**

"Oh bloody hell, don't just sit there!" Merida swore out loud.

This exercise was frustrating to say the least. She was furious because she had been the leader of the Alpha two team and she hadn't seen Hades coming, worse even he had taken them down so fast it was ridiculous.

She was furious for that failure even though she knew that they were no match to Hades, they wouldn't be for years if ever, but still she felt that she had failed.

After Hades had put them all down they went back to the headquarters to observe the rest of the exercise (as was the custom).

Usually they would watch exercises afterward to understand their mistakes, it was the first time that she was watching an exercise unfold and she hated every second of it.

Merida was pacing as she watched Anna finally standing from her sitting position. For the past five minutes Hades had in all appearances tried to get through the redhead to no avail.

"She's moving," Hercules voiced out the obvious.

"Finally! Come on Sunfield, sharpen up!"

Anna was…

Merida didn't have a real problem with the other redhead, but she couldn't deny that the girl was a weak link. She had undeniable skills and more will than others (proof was that she was still there while others had dropped out) but she was too sweet, she was… an exuberant firecracker.

Anna could pull her weight but it was hard to tell whether or not she didn't see the whole training as a joke. She was easily distracted and too sensitive. It was no different than training with a live teddy bear, it cheered you up and make you feel comfy however it didn't make you feel safe.

Merida (and she knew she wasn't the only one) didn't trust Anna to be able to make the right decisions to carry on a mission. The other redhead was too soft and didn't really grasp the reality of things, which is why she'd only do what was necessary without actually pushing herself, why she would always let others do the hard stuff only getting into it if there was no alternative, why she was more concern about the team spirit and well being than about their missions. Today hadn't been the first time she had ruined an exercise to check on someone or out of panic.

Anna was too soft and she didn't have the mental toughness necessary to be a good soldier. In other words she wasn't cut out for the army (again, Merida knew she wasn't the only one with that kind of thoughts).

Now Merida had to watch Anna as the girl was most likely going to fail and she dreaded the repercussions of that failure.

The whole Alpha two team anxiously watched Anna's progression, by the time they understood that Anna was facing a portal gate, Merida was pacing like a caged animal.

"She should have sent that signal right away… they'll never reach her in time now," Merida mumbled.

"How long do you think before the pucks go off?" Hercules asked out loud to no one in particular.

"If she's smart she set the timer to five minutes, she'll need the energy from the gate to have the slightest chance to destroy it," Merida responded.

The whole team held their breath when the portal opened just one minute after Anna had gotten down the gate again. "Move, you dingbat!" Merida shouted at the screen when it seemed that Anna was frozen. Now wasn't the time for the redhead to be distracted.

It was sickening to watch not because Anna was making mistake after mistake (she was able to hold off the enemies in spite of those) but because there was nothing they could do. They were a team and yet, Anna was on her own while they could only sit there and watch her being outnumbered and almost powerless.

"Come on, Anna, two minutes down, just two to go, you can do it," Merida knew her team mate couldn't hear her but that didn't stop her from talking to the screen.

"If she's lucky she'll only have sentinels to face," a recruit named Nemo stated with an hopeful voice.

Anna had just exploded twenty and some odd sentinels.

"Ah crap, there goes her luck," Hercules cursed when a pitcher started to emerged from the portal.

"Watch out!… No!" Merida exclaimed when Anna was hit.

"Is she…?" someone asked.

"I don't think so, I think it hit her shoulder," Hercules replied.

"Of course we don't have a reading of her vitals… bloody smoke, we can't see anything!" Merida was losing her temper.

It felt like they had been watching things unfold for hours, even though it was mere minutes.

"There she is!"

Merida's heart was thumping violently in her chest, Anna had used almost everything at her disposal and the damn portal kept spewing enemies in mass. She wanted nothing more than to go out there and give a hand to Anna but she couldn't, she was beyond frustrated.

"Numbers!" Merida barked.

"One minute until the pucks activate, Alpha one and three are just under two minutes out!" a recruit answered immediately.

"So much for the rescue…" Hercules mumbled.

Anna was focused on the sentinels in front of her, not seeing the approaching pitcher. "Sunfield, behind…"

They all winced when Anna was thrown in the air. They didn't have the sound but they all felt a chill when they saw her face distorted in agony.

"forty seconds!"

"Crap… Sunfield get up you're next to the portal!"

Anna had the presence of mind to use an ice puck to stop the pitcher but she had barely put any distance between the portal and herself when the electro–pucks finally came to life.

"Here comes the cavalry," someone scoffed when Alpha one and three were spotted in the distance. No one spare them a second though, all their attention on Anna.

The silence filled the room as every members of Alpha two was holding their breath. Anna had been too close to the portal when it imploded and had been propelled violently in the air before crashing down almost a hundred feet backward.

Anna's immobile figure on the ground made them fear that she had 'died', her suit was most likely paralyzing her to let her know that much. It felt wrong that the redhead had managed to go that far only to fail at the very last second.

"YES!"

Merida's sudden scream made them all jumped. Anna was getting up meaning that had 'survived' the whole thing. She was in terrible shape but that was alright all thing considered.

"Eww… gross," Nemo chortled when Anna let it all out on Hades.

Merida plopped down on a chair, her muscles sore from all the tension they had sustained for the past twenty minutes.

If at the beginning of the exercise they had been asked if they would lay their lives in Anna's hands every member of the Alpha two team would have answered with a resounding and unanimous 'no'. It wasn't about being mean, they were just realistic after training together for months.

As of five second ago, Anna had unknowingly earned her team mates' respect and trust. Sure she had piled up mistakes during the exercise and they had been actively criticising those but they also knew that decisions taken in the heat of the action could never be judged from the comfort of a safe room.

Thinking about it, it was because Anna had made mistakes and still managed to fulfil the mission that had won Alpha two over. They were all left to wonder if any of them could have done what Anna had done had they been in the same circumstances.

Anna was an exuberant firecracker, Merida thought again, but she was also a damn good soldier.

When Anna entered the headquarters of the arena she was surprised to find fifteen pairs of eyes fixed upon her. All her team mates rose from their seats at once but no one said anything. When the redhead noticed the display on the screen, she felt her stomach drop when she realized that her recent humiliation had been witnessed by all of them.

She misinterpreted their faint grins as a sign of mockery, assumed that she was already the butt monkey of many vomit related jokes.

A spasm of pain distracted her from her team mates, she needed to get in a caisson and fast. To her surprise Merida and Hercules were at her sides in seconds and led her to the part of the room that was used for medical care.

They both helped her out of her suit. Anna greeted her teeth and used all the energy she had left not to show how much she was in pain. Thick beads of sweat were covering her face by the time she was standing in her black shorts and white sleeveless shirt. She had to clench her jaw tighter when she felt a new wave of nausea making it up her throat.

"Bloody hell, that arm looks terrible," Merida couldn't help herself when she saw the sickening shade of purple of the other redhead's arm. She had known that Anna's arm was barely functional, but now that she saw it, she was even more impressed that Anna had used it at all.

Anna climbed into the caisson without assistance (out of pride) and laid down waiting for the glass top to slide into place.

"Hey, Sunfield," Merida waited until she had Anna's attention. "You were a bloody rock star out there," she smirked.

Anna was so surprised she was speechless. The top of the caisson slid back in place encasing her in and she looked at Hercules who simply tapped the glass with a smile as if to confirm what Merida had said. She didn't have time to dwell on it as exhaustion finally took over, she closed her eyes slipped into oblivion while her body repaired itself.

**ooOoo**

Elsa took a look at the tray Gerda had brought and wondered how she was ever going to eat everything that was on it, that thought had slightly damped her mood knowing that Kai wouldn’t let her leave unless she ate properly. As soon as the aromas of the food reached her nose though she felt her mouth watering, her stomach turned into a starving beast and knew that she would give back cleaned plates to Gerda. She couldn’t help but smile when she noticed the glass of milk and chocolate dessert.

She sat down and took one half of the copious sandwich, letting out a soft moan of appreciation at the first bite.

She was pausing before wolfing down the other half of her sandwich when there was a knock on the door. She wiped her mouth and hands before answering. “Come in.”

Kai’s head popped in and she immediately said “I _am_ eating, sir. I’m even going to finish, I promise!” Then she rolled her eyes mentally berating herself, remembering that she was, as she had pointed out earlier, almost 23 and the Queen therefore she didn’t have to justify herself to anyone.

“Lieutenant General Best is here, shall I tell him to come back later?” Kai, once again, hid his amusement behind a neutral expression.

“Oh… no, send him in, I don’t mind some company.”

Kai nodded then disappeared again, two minutes later Lucius Best entered the room.

“Want to share lunch with me?” she asked without preamble.

“Only fools refuse something Gerda prepared,” he nodded before sitting down next to her, they both turned their chairs so they would be facing one another. Elsa split the rest of her lunch and offered the biggest part to Lucius.

“So what brings you here?” she asked after a couple of bites.

“I’ve been thinking about that conversation we had six months ago.”

“Have you reached a decision?”

“Yes,” Lucius marked a pause. “I want to step out from the field and be put in the reserve teams at the next rotation.”

Elsa took a deep breath held it three seconds before releasing it. She nodded silently. "It's funny, I knew this was coming but in a way I was hoping this wasn't it."

"I'm not leaving the army, I just think it's time for me to step down to let fresh blood step in," he smiled gently. "Besides I think I'll be more useful supervising the training of the young recruits. You don't really need me out there."

There was a long pause, Elsa tried to gather her thoughts. She and Lucius had never had any difficulty to talk, but this is one conversation they had never had and there were things she needed to say. "I know that you stayed longer than you had to… for me… after my parents…" she felt a swell of emotions and took a second or two in order to compose herself again.

Almost four years had gone by and she still had difficulty talking about her parents' passing. She cleared her throat and went on. "I truly appreciate everything you've done for me, every sacrifice you've made to look after me."

Elsa had just turned thirteen when Lucius started her mentoring. He was the one to give her the greatest gift of all: control of her powers. Control meant that she could interact with people, it meant that she could use her powers for greater things, in this case the army. She wouldn't be where she was today without Lucius.

That control had been lost when her parents died, she had regained just enough to take the throne and assume her responsibilities, but it had taken three years for her to be fully in control again.

Much like Kai, Lucius had been a surrogate father to the young blonde. Kai had helped her grow up into a Queen, and Lucius into a General.

"You've seen me at my lowest and were instrumental in my recovery," Elsa continued. "Forgive me for I've never said it before. Thank you Lucius. For everything."

The man smiled affectionately at her. "I needed to stay too, for my own sake, so…" he shrugged.

"It'll be weird not to have you by my sides."

"Girl, long gone is the time when you needed my guidance. I've taught you everything and you've been doing great with it all."

"Be as it may, having you on the team was… comforting."

"Elsa," he called her softly. "You are ready," he assured her. “I know you’re not at ease interacting with new people and that you’re a bit apprehensive to change the team’s line up but it’ll be fine. You’re a great leader, you know what to do.”

She pondered his words then nodded. "I am proud of you," her mentor kept on. "And I know they are too."

"I like to think so," she whispered.

"They are," Lucius repeated in a way that left no room for doubt.

Elsa cleared her throat again. "Any last advice?"

"The same as always, keep control because without control…"

"Powers are nothing," she finished.

"Exactly," he beamed. "Speaking of which, do you want to play Ice Master?"

Elsa winced. "I don't know… it feels wrong to beat an old man."

"Excuse me?" Lucius scoffed at her with disbelief.

"You heard me… oh, right, they do say that hearing is one of the first thing to go with age," Elsa had to purse her lips not to smile.

"Look at you being all cheeky now, correct if I'm wrong but that 'old man' has never lost against you for the past what? Ten years?"

Lucius wasn't mad at his protégée, in fact he enjoyed their banter. He liked it when Elsa let it go a bit and joked around, at least for a few moment she forgot about the weight of responsibilities on her shoulders.

"Well you know…you were my mentor so I just held back not to make you feel bad…"

"Yeah right," Lucius rolled his eyes.

"Now that you're not anymore…"

"Alright bring it on smarty pants," he defied her. "And just to spice things up I'm going to beat you with my weak hand," he announced holding left hand out palm up.

Elsa held out her left hand right above his. Ice Master was a simple game designed to help them mastering control of their powers. They held their hands one above the other, palm toward palm and with their powers they had to create intricate snowflakes made of the thinnest ice possible in the space in between. They had to take turn to add to the ice creation, whoever failed to add to it or broke the ice sculpture lost.

It was easy in theory, but in practice it demanded complete control, not enough power and the addition wouldn't hold, too much and the whole thing would break. The fact that their powers had to be concentrated in one hand made it trickier.

Elsa had never won a game of Ice Master, she had progressed and every time she thought she was finally close to beat Lucius he'd outdo her again, but that didn't stop her from trying relentlessly.

"Ready when you are Grandpa."

"I want you to know that I'm going to enjoy watching you choke on that cockiness of yours, Kiddo," Lucius chuckled as he started the game.

**ooOoo**

"Agraba Aladdin, Dunbroch Merida, Fa Mulan… come on hurry up,” Hades ordered as they form a new row.

After this morning’s exercise he had decided to switch the teams. Weeks into this last phase of training he now knew which recruit would work best together. “Olympia Hercules, Paddy Kristoff, Parr Jack-Jack, Rudolf Sven and Sunfield Anna.”

“Oh man…” as soft as it was the mutter didn’t go unnoticed.

Hades moved to face the one recruit constantly testing his patience. “Do you have a problem with my management, Agraba?”

“No S…”

“Then control the noises coming out of your mouth or else I’ll turn that tongue of yours into ashes!” her cut the young man off.

“Yes, Sir.”

Hades turned around and took a few steps back to be facing all of the six new groups again.

“I want you to look at the seven persons next to you, from now on you’ll learn everything there is to know about them, their strengths, their weaknesses. You’ll learn how to complement them with your own abilities. You’ll learn to work with them and to trust them. This is your definitive team, meaning that when you are done with this training these are the people you’ll go on the field with. You are now accountable for those seven lives and they are accountable for yours. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Sir!”

"You are a team, you are to think, move and act as one. One of you fall, you all do; one of you fail, you all do; one of you makes a mistakes, you all assume the consequences. Last but not least, you do not leave anyone behind, no matter what happened, you stick together."

"Yes, Sir!"

"Very well, on for the first exercise then. Please consult your HopeComs and get moving, I want 40 seconds in between each team starting point."

They were to redo the obstacle course, they had five minutes to do so which was the standard required time, only this time they had to carry one of them who will be assumed to be hurt. In order to complete the exercise in the given time they'd have to think and act together.

Hades wouldn't let them stop until they get that exercise right, no matter how long that would take.

**ooOoo**

Elsa and Lucius’ game lasted for forty minutes before Elsa lost (yet again) to her mentor; She was not a sore loser and was rather impressed because they had gone at it longer than they ever had before. They discussed a bit more about Lucius’ situation and he informed her that he would do the formal announcement to the rest of the team himself.

She had informed Kai that she would be at the training arenas should anything need her attention (she had ignored the smug look on his face when she had given back an empty tray to Gerda), then promptly left.

When she arrived in the military zone she saluted the few recruits and officers she saw with a respectful nod. She found the arena 6 and put her hand on the mural panel next to the door. It unlocked immediately and she let herself in.

She found Hades standing with his arms folded over his large chest, observing the trainees performing in the exercise she quickly identified. She walked to her Lieutenant and stood next to him.

“The twisted seven,” she stated referring to the exercise.

Hades glanced at her. “General,” he nodded.

“Lieutenant,” she mimicked him.

“I wish you had given me a warning about your visit, I’m not too fond of surprises,” Hades said sternly.

“Oh… yes, my apologies about…” Elsa started but stopped herself. “This is you mocking me again, isn't it?” she narrowed her eyes at the man.

Hades grinned. “You do make it easy.”

“One of these days… you know I could punish you, right?”

“I know,” he chortled.

“I’ll force you to run your training wearing a pink tutu.”

Hades tilted his head with a pout. “Meh I’m pretty in pink and I have great legs so I wouldn’t mind showing them off,” he replied seriously.

Elsa snorted as she realised that nothing she say could rattle the other officer, then shook her head at the conjured images. “That is on disturbing visual,” she muttered.

Hades smirked then became serious again. They watched one team struggling to pass an obstacle and ultimately failing not realising that they had to move as one to get over it. “Reminiscing the good times?”

Elsa scoffed. “No offence, but there’s absolutely no second of your training that fall into the ‘good times’ category.”

“Awww… stop it you’re going to make me blush,” Hades smiled taking her words as a compliment.

“So… how are they doing?

“They are individually promising, but seem not to understand the concept of team work, or team, period.”

“That’s problematic.”

“I’ve made the definitive teams just an hour ago, clearly the next days will be about getting any traction between them.”

“Any Gifted?”

“Two per team amazingly enough,” Hades pointed out.

“Interesting,” Elsa bobbed her head at the information. “That hadn’t happened in a while.”

“Another thing that hadn’t happened in a while, one of them actually impressed me this morning.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Anna Sunfield,” Elsa’s attention sharpened at the name. “Lot of potential but lacks the proper drive, clumsy and sometimes easily distracted, yet this morning she held siege four minutes and destroyed a portal gate by herself.”

“Not bad,” Elsa agreed.

“I shall mention now that I had impaired her greatly beforehand. There were many mistakes, and it is just training, nevertheless I was impressed, I mean she’s the first to succeed such a task since you, of course she doesn’t compare at all, but still.”

“You don’t say.”

So Anna Sunfield had made it that far into the training and by the sound of it she had quite some skills.

“I need them to be field ready in four weeks,” she announced non sequitur.

Hades frowned. “That would shorten their training by three months.”

“I know, but I want them to integrate the active teams on the next rotation.”

“Does that have to do anything with what you discussed on our last meeting?”

“It does. I need them to acquire as much field experience as possible and I rather have them learn progressively with enough room to make mistakes than to throw them in the fire at the last minute.”

“It makes sense.”

“Now, I know what I’m asking and I realise it’s a lot so I’ll understand if you can’t deliver, I mean with time you’ve probably lost your edge. I must say that watching them, I’m starting to see that you’re going soft on me, back when I was in their shoes we barely have energy left to breathe let alone stand, they seem hardly worn out.”

“Oh, that is cold,” Hades feigned being hurt.

“Hardly surprising coming from me, I’m sure you’ll find a way to warm yourself up again.”

“Payback for the teasing, is it?”

“Now, now I am above such pettiness,” Elsa smirked.

Whatever she was about to say died on the tip of her tongue as the shouting from recruits called both their attention.

**ooOoo**

"How hard is it for you to count to three?" Aladdin spat to Merida.

"If you were paying attention, you'd have heard the rest of us telling you that the cable was loose!" the redhead didn't back out.

"Let's take it down a notch," Mulan stated with an even voice.

They had already repeated the exercise eight times, never getting anywhere near the required time, in five minutes the best they had done so far was to get past the sixth obstacle (considering it was a thirty eight obstacle course, it spoke volume of their ability to work as a team). The instructions were simple, yet they couldn't figure out a way to complete the course because there was more friction than traction between them.

"We can't pass that obstacle that way, it doesn't matter how many times we do it, as long as we won't change our approach we'll get stuck," Jack–Jack pointed out.

"And what else do you suggest big shot?" Aladdin lost his patience.

"First, I suggest you calm down, pal," Hercules was having more and more difficulties to temper his urge to hit the Persian man.

"I'm not your pal, you useless mass of muscle!" Aladdin dismissed him.

"Hey, like it or not we are a team now, so stop channelling your inner jerk," Kristoff stepped in. "And outer jerk and general jerkiness, really."

"Brilliant guys…" Anna clapped her hands slowly. "Do you need another minute to ooze your testosterone or do you think we could focus on the task at hand, because in case you forgot we are currently failing."

"Why do you care, it's not like you were useful anyway, Upchuck."

"What did you just call me?" Anna looked at him dangerously.

"Upchuck," Aladdin used his 'you are mentally slow' voice. "What? You got vomit in your…"

Aladdin was confused as to how he had ended up on the floor, at least during the three seconds preceding the intense pain in his jaw.

"Don't talk to her like that," Hercules uttered through his teeth. He had lost the battle with his temper and deck the other boy when he started to disrespect Anna.

Everyone who knew that Anna had been sick on Hades had kept quiet never making a comment about it, out of respect for the redhead. Hercules wanted to keep it that way.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Anna pushed Hercules square in the chest. "I don't need you or anybody to defend myself, you got that Wonderboy?!"

"Well, this is going wonderfully," Merida stated with a sigh.

"This team is absolutely lamentable," Mulan snorted with disbelief.

"What team?" the redhead came back.

"Right…"

Their voices were mingling so it was hard to know who was insulting who, but it all came to a halt when a sudden and unexpected wave of cold reached them. They all shivered, their breath now visible.

"What the…" Anna looked around and immediately spotted the source of the temperature shift. "Oh great…"

Hades and General Arendelle were staring at them. Even from where she was she could tell they were not pleased. This didn't bode well, at all.

**ooOoo**

Elsa watched as a team was arguing, she felt her temper rising when insults were exchanged. When the punch came she could feel herself boiling. If there was one thing she couldn't stand it was the lack of respect among team mates.

Being in a team didn't mean liking your team mates, but it meant respecting each one of them. The lack of respect was dangerous, because then there was no trust. On the field, trust made everything.

The attitude of that team was inadmissible.

Elsa knew better than to question Hades’ choices when it came to make the perfect team but that little show left her dubitative.

Hades had known that this team would be troublesome, because they clearly had personality clashes but he also knew that this team was perfect, at least it would be once they’d understand how complementary they were together.

Elsa realised that her powers had spiked a bit when she noticed the puffs of smoke coming from the recruits in front of her and immediately calmed down again.

“Lack of traction indeed…” Elsa mused out loud.

"They will be ready in four weeks, General,” Hades affirmed. He was past the point of anger or fury. His recruits were about to have the training of a lifetime, that was a guarantee.

“I know,” Elsa nodded, she trusted her officer completely. “Even if you did lose a bit of your edge,” she smirked to let him know that she was teasing. “A suggestion if I may, your disciplinary policy needs a slight upgrade,”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“I’ll leave you to it then,” she saluted him with a nod. She couldn’t explain her next request but went with it. “Hades,” she called him before he went away. She pointed Anna’s team “That lot is mine.”

Hades bobbed his head in acknowledgement.

“Go give them hell, Lieutenant.”

“With pleasure, General,” Hades chuckled in anticipation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shout out to Requ(Etude)'s wonderful story 'A Formal Arrangement' thanks to which I've learnt the term 'Cockalorum'. :-D
> 
> Thanks for reading


	3. Part 3

“Do you realise what you did, Elsa?”

“I… I didn’t mean to…I…” her voice was weak as tears were rolling silently against her cheeks.

“This is why you are not allowed to use your power without any adult present!” Thaddeus Arendelle was down on one knee to be at eye level with his daughter. He tried his best to keep his temper in check but the fear and adrenaline still flowing in his veins made it hard.

A young girl had almost died today and even if it was an accident the responsibility of it all fell on his shoulders.

It had been quite a normal summer afternoon, children – Elsa’s classmates, children of the royal staff – had been playing gaily, their laughter echoing in the royal quarters. The warmth of the day no longer bearable Elsa had been asked if she could ‘do the magic’, King Thaddeus had happily accepted as long as she respected the rules, as always.

So it was under Gerda’s careful eyes that the six–year–old had changed one of the ballrooms into a snow globe.

Gerda had left them to get some hot drinks and cakes, as she had done so many times before. No longer supervised, the children excitedly asked Elsa to build snow ramps they could slide and jump from, as they had done so on several occasions before. Elsa had agreed, as she had done so in the past.

Today, however, things hadn’t gone as well as they had before. Today, she had made higher ramps than usual, so her friends had glided and jumped faster than usual, faster than she could follow. She had tried to keep up, amusement quickly turned into worry, then into horror when one icy blast hit one of her friends square in the head, knocking her out.

The laughter died immediately, replaced by frightened screams.

Gerda had come back running as soon as she had heard the commotion, letting the tray she was carrying fall with a loud crash. She had left the room for less than five minutes, upon re-entering she had felt her heart stop and her blood turned to ice when she saw a small figure lying still on the floor.

In a few seconds she had understood what had happened, she had forced herself not to panic when she hadn’t been able to find a pulse, she had gathered the inert young girl in her arms and broke to a run to her master.

King Thaddeus had been even quicker to react.

Fifteen minutes had never felt so long. Gerda had kept it together silently praying and making foolish bargains with any deity for the child to be alive.

When they had been told that the little girl would be okay, there hadn’t been any relief. Gerda had immediately braced herself for what was to come.

She had curtly been ordered to return to the ballroom to make sure that all the children were all alright and sent back home.

In the seven years she had served the house of Arendelle, never had the King addressed to her with such an algid tone.

Now standing in the King’s office, she couldn’t stop berating herself for being careless, and was expecting to be sacked before the end of business day.

A part of her was irrationally angry at little Elsa because the girl knew better, but Gerda forced herself to remember that the six year old had just acted her age.

“Elsa, your power is not a toy!”

Elsa was trembling like a leaf and her heart was beating frantically against her ribcage. She had never seen her father being so upset before, his eyes wide, not with anger but with an indescribable terror.

Thaddeus immediately eased his grip on his daughter’s shoulders when her frightened stare cut through the veil of his fear. He never wanted his daughter to be scared of him but he knew she was right now. He took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before releasing it.

“Sweetheart,” he started with a much gentler tone. “Your gift is a beautiful thing but it can be dangerous because you don’t control it properly yet. And today… I know you were only having fun but…” he trailed off.

He knew Elsa was feeling bad and he didn’t want to add weight to the already heavy burden on her shoulders, but he also knew the importance of her understanding of the situation. She needed to fully appreciate the gravity of her action so she wouldn’t take the use of her power lightly again. “You hurt someone today.”

Elsa’s tears doubled. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, everything had gone too fast. “Is Jane going to be okay?” she asked through her tears.

Thaddeus sighed. “She will need intensive care, but she will be with time.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“I know you are,” he gave her a sad smile. “From now on you’re not allowed to use your power with the other children, understood?”

“Yes, Sir,” she snivelled.

Thaddeus wiped his daughter’s tears with his thumbs then leant in to kiss her forehead. He didn’t want her to believe that he loved her any less. He knew that today she had only been a six-year-old doing what any six-year-old would have done to have fun.

He was not naive, he knew that today’s game was one the children had played before, and Elsa had always been chastised when she overused her power unsupervised. Today was just a reminder that unfortunately his little girl would have to be responsible long before reaching adulthood, her power didn’t allow her the luxury of being as oblivious and carefree as someone her age.

“Now go to your room, you are grounded,” he instructed softly before standing up.

Elsa nodded and with her head hanging low she followed Gerda back to her room.

Gerda was too lost in her own thoughts to spare a sympathetic glance or gesture to Elsa, she was trying to find the arguments that would be good enough to convince the King and Queen that she was still worthy of their trust, that she’d give anything to keep her position.

Elsa chanced a glance to the housekeeper, she had been very bad today and by doing so she had gotten Gerda into trouble. She knew because she had heard her father scold her, he had used his big voice even though he hadn’t shouted.

“I’m sorry I disobeyed,” she said tentatively. Gerda gave a small and absentminded nod to acknowledge the apology but no further word were utter on the way to her room.

Gerda entered her room first then stepped aside next to the door as Elsa shuffled in. “Gerda?” Elsa’s trembling voice echoed in the room. “Do you… still love me?”

The innocent question was enough to break the housekeeper’s heart. She put her worries aside and walked to the little girl, crouching to be at eye level she was facing blue eyes brimming with tears, trembling lips, anguish expression that made her heart ache.

Gerda grinned reassuringly, framing the young face delicately with her hands. “Of course I still love you, you’re my little snowflake.”

Elsa threw her arms around the housekeeper’s neck holding onto it fiercely, Gerda held the girl tightly as she sobbed away the fear, confusion and guilt that were far too heavy for her little shoulders.

The housekeeper swayed them gently until Elsa’s sobs subsided to soft hiccups. “There, there.”

Gerda pulled away a little bit so she could watch the child she had helped raised since birth and for the first time she felt powerless.

She had been twenty two when Elsa was born and had been serving the House of Arendelle for a year already. While King Thaddeus and Queen Magdalena were very attentive and involved parents, they did rule a Kingdom and as a result they needed help to raise their child.

She had, much like the Queen, spent many sleepless nights at the child’s sides when she had been sick; she had kissed away many childish wounds, and chased away monsters. She had always found a way to make Elsa feel better.

Today however, there was nothing she could do to provide real comfort to the little girl. She knew how sensitive Elsa was and she also knew that today’s event had scarred the little girl deeply. She could only hope that her love would be enough to help Elsa get through it all.

She gave Elsa a small grin before kissing her forehead. “Let’s wash your face, come on.”

A couple of hours later Elsa was bathed and asleep, worn out by the day. As she closed the bedroom door Gerda was aware that her small reprieve was now over, she had to face her masters again, this time to be dealt the consequences of her poor judgement.

In the best case she’d be demoted, losing the housekeeper position would be hard but a rather small price to pay and there would still be a possibility to gain her rank back. The worst case was for her to be fired, something she wasn’t sure she’d handle well. It’d be hard for her to find a new job, after that. Who would want someone fired from the most prestigious house of the Kingdom?

Gerda walked back to the Royal quarters where she knew the King and Queen were waiting for her. Kai was standing at the door but she avoided his eyes facing the door instead. She couldn’t stand the thought of seeing disappointment in the other man.

Kai mirrored her position but instead of going inside he grabbed her right hand delicately and discreetly, rubbing his thumb on her skin for two precious seconds.

Gerda almost lost the tight hold she had over her emotions. The affectionate gesture which had been meant to comfort her only served to remind her of the other precious thing she would most likely lose. Her bottom lip was trembling and tears were ready to be shade but she forced herself to take a deep breath. Kai squeezed her hand then let go knowing that such a display of emotion wouldn’t do the housekeeper any good while facing their masters.

Kai had arrived to the House of Arendelle a year prior to Gerda and while their first interaction had been bordering on hostility they had learnt to work in concert and slowly appreciate the other. It had only been during the past few months that things had slowly began to shift between them. Though they were both on the same wavelength, nothing had been addressed, and no concrete step had been taken since they had yet to figure out the ramification such a change could imply for their respective position.

Although right now the matter was most likely to be taken out of their hands after all.

The young woman regained her composure with three deep cleansing breaths taking some strength from the brief contact. Once she was ready she gave a curt nod to the door and Kai opened it to announce her.

The reprimand was delivered with calm and poised voices but that didn’t make it any less virulent. When she was dismissed Gerda exited the room quietly, colours had drained from her face and it took all her energy to keep her steps steady as she reached her own quarters.

It took her an hour to process it all and realize that not only she was keeping her job but she was also keeping her position.

 

**––oOo––**

 

“Anna?”

Big lagoon green eyes rose to meet the woman’s. “I am Mrs Pot, welcome to Arendelle’s Blue Haven sweetie,” the woman put one knee down to level with the five-year-old. “I know you’re probably scared right now because this is a big new place, but I promise to make everything so that you eventually feel at home.”

“Can’t I stay with Mom and Dad?” the response of the five-year-old’s response came in a tiny whisper.

Grace Pot had funded the Arendelle’s Blue Haven orphanage almost ten years ago and still to this day her heart broke for every new soul walking through her threshold. It didn’t matter how many times that scene repeated itself, there was no amount of preparation that made it somewhat easier.

“Sweetheart, there was an accident and your Mom and Dad were hurt and they can no longer take care of you now,” Grace Pot allowed the child a moment to assimilate her words before continuing. “They both loved you very, very much and if they could they’d be here, but they can’t which is why I’m the one who’s going to take care of you from now on.”

Warm tears were rolling silently over Anna’s cheeks, she was scared and didn’t really understand everything, all she wanted was a warm hug from her parents. 

 

**––oOo––**

 

Elsa woke up with a start, soaked with cold sweat her clothes were clinging to her like a second skin. She gasped for air trying to calm down her thundering heart.

It was always the same scene, yet somehow every time it was more terrifying than the time before. She was in the ballroom playing with her friends, then her powers would go rogue and start hurting everybody. The more she tried to control it the worse things got until she was left alone surrounded by bodies, right when she realized this her powers would turn against her.

She was trembling like a leaf, icicles had sprouted from the floor and surrounded her bed. Her power always seemed to have a mind of its own, it scared her even more because it meant she had no control over it.

The small icy spikes sprouting from the floor and walls disappeared as she slowly untangled herself from the remnants of her nightmare.

She got out of bed and padded bare feet in the dark maze of corridors, went down the two flights of stairs and sneaked into the kitchen. There she hid in a corner. She had found the perfect spot, there was a gap between a counter and one corner of wall, it was far from anything dangerous and she was out of the way of the staff.

There was a formal event tonight so the kitchen was in effervescence. It was a symphony of noises, smells and colours. Knives drummed speedy rhythms on cutting boards, pots hummed gently rampant basses, pans sizzled crisp melodies, the whole thing coming to life under the direction of Gerda who, like the greatest orchestra conductor, didn’t let any false note ring.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to be out of bed but she couldn’t stay in her room after a nightmare, she could see the bodies and hear the screams, feel her ice power like a shadow lurking waiting to attack her. She always needed a source of light and heat after a tormented sleep, a way to distance herself from the unforgiving ice.

She knew that if she went to her parents they’d understand, they’d hug her, one of them would take her back to bed and watch over her until she felt right back to sleep. She didn’t want to go because she was eight, she was a big girl and she should not be afraid of the dark or bad dreams. Her bedroom was just a room, there were no monsters under her bed or hidden in her closets, no bodies littering the floor and no one was screaming.

She couldn’t help her fears though, so until then she’d stay where it was warm and luminous and full of life.

Gerda had felt the slight drop of temperature immediately, maybe she was more sensitive to it out of habit, but she had been aware of Elsa’s presence as soon as the little girl (well, not so little anymore) had entered the kitchen. She had needed a couple of minutes to properly locate the small figure but her instincts had been right.

The housekeeper had guessed that Elsa was having a rough night, one involving a vivid nightmare. Ever since the incident that had almost cost another child’s life, Elsa had been plagued with horrible nightmares. Gerda had lost counts of the sleepless nights, the waking up screaming and crying. It had taken almost a full year for the nightmares to become more sporadic.

Today, two years later, Elsa didn’t have as many nightmares but the ones she did have were intense. She knew the girl pretended that she didn’t have them and forced herself not to call for her or her parents, as if ashamed to be scared.

It broke Gerda’s heart. She had watched the childhood joy that once sparked in the little girl slowly fade away because of one fateful afternoon.

The life in the House of Arendelle had drastically changed after that day. Elsa had been gifted with a power at birth and raising her had had its challenges, especially at the beginning when she was not aware of said power. Once she was though it had always been something beautiful, something she enjoyed. That afternoon changed everything. Elsa had started to fear what she once loved, now that she knew it could hurt.

Unable to control her power she had been forced to seclusion as a matter of safety for other children, as for the staff save from Gerda and Kai very few dared approaching the girl after facing unexpected surge of power and misfortunate injuries.

Incidents were less frequent, unexpected spikes of power only occurred when Elsa was stressed or scared. When she was agitated like right now, a subtle chill would follow her but that was it.

Gerda kept her attention to the tasks at hand, her masters were entertaining company tonight also she had to make sure that everything was perfect. She decided to give Elsa a moment to calm down on her own.

Once she had a minute to spare she took a pot and started to prepare some hot chocolate.

Elsa kept her mind busy by trying to identify each of the delicious smells wafting in the air, and counting the trays coming and going out of the kitchen.

“Remy, where are you on the second course?”

Elsa had been so caught up in her thought she had failed to notice Gerda coming next to her hiding spot. She didn’t make any move, since Gerda hadn’t noticed her. Gerda put down a tray she was holding then went back away, probably to talk to the cook Remy.

She was about to return to her count of trays when she was surprised by the rich aroma of chocolate invading her nostrils. She felt her mouth water immediately.

She crouched, and leaned a bit around the counter to observe the kitchen and noticed that no one was anywhere near her. She stood up, she was almost two heads taller than the counter. There before her a steaming cup of what she had correctly identified as hot chocolate, next to it a plate with two small chocolate cakes covered with a colourful cream.

The sight ignited a battle between her mind and her stomach. She wasn’t hungry _per se_ but she could eat chocolate every second of every day, that much she was certain of. She started to reach out for one of the delicious looking cakes but pull her hand away as if burnt when she was about to reach her target. She looked up again, but no one was paying attention to her.

She bit her lower lip and after a long hesitation she grabbed one cake and immediately ducked back down into her corner. Her heart was beating madly in her chest as she waited for someone, anyone to come and find her and reprimand her for being in the kitchen in the first place.

A whole minute passed before she leant forward again to look around, still no one was paying attention. She retreated to her corner and a small grin appeared on her lips as she stared at the cake in her hand. She took a first tentative bite and though she had known it would taste good she was still blown away at the explosion of flavour in her mouth.

She forced herself to eat slowly to enjoy every bit of the cake. After swallowing the last bite, she felt a strong pull toward the remaining cake and hot chocolate. She had successfully gotten away with the first one, she could probably get away with the other items on the tray. After all with everything going on, and so much to do that hot chocolate and last little cake were probably already forgotten.

She straightened up again to look around and sure enough no one was paying any attention to her or the tray. She could taste the chocolate in her mouth and really wanted to make that taste last so with barely an hesitation she grabbed the big cup and took a sip. The beverage was still warm and Elsa almost drank it all in one go.

She put down the cup with still some liquid in it. She didn’t realised that she was grinning or that her nightmare was nothing but a distant memory, too focus as she was on the pleasure of tasting things that were so good.

Just as she reached for the last cake she looked up and saw Gerda looking at her from across the room. Her first reflex was to hide again but before she could move Gerda winked at her with a barely there grin on her lips. Elsa smiled back, grabbed the cake and retreated in her hiding spot to enjoy her treat.

When Gerda went back to Elsa, she found the little girl dozing off. She braced her in her arms and took her back to her bed. She pushed back Elsa’s bang of hair to deliver a kiss on her forehead.

Gerda left the room with the conviction that no more nightmare would torment Elsa for the day.

 

**––oOo––**

 

“Race you to the top!” Anna challenged her two best friends Kristoff and Sven.

She jumped and grabbed one of thick branches of the tallest oak tree of the yard. Anna climbed the tree so often that she could literally find a path with her closed eyes starting from any side of the trunk.

She loved that tree, the branches were thick and going in every direction like the tree was opening welcoming arms to her. She had fallen many times from that tree learning to climb it, bruises and cuts never altering the way she felt about it.

Nothing beat the view or the feeling of elation when she’d get sitting on the higher branches.

“Anna, wait up!” the young blonde boy called after her.

At first she’d climbed to wait for her parents to come and get her, now she just enjoyed watching the world behind the limits of the orphanage, thinking about the day she’d get to discover it.

She was slightly out of breath when she reached her favourite spot. She let her legs swing happily, as she watched her two friends reaching her level.

“I beat you again!”

“It doesn’t count if you start running before announcing it’s a race,” Kristoff countered.

“You’re just jealous I beat you.”

“No, I’m not! Sven, tell her that I’m right!”

They both turned toward the other boy who despite being eight, just like them, was much taller. He just shrugged with a grin.

“Of course, you always side with her!” Kristoff pouted.

Anna leaned in a kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t be mad.”

“Eww,” Kristoff made a show of rubbing his cheek.

Anna rolled her eyes, she knew the other boy didn’t mind the affection but he did like making a show of pretending he did.

 

**––oOo––**

  

Elsa looked left and right quickly before making her exit from the kitchen her pockets full of delicious bounties she would enjoy before and after dinner. Getting treats was becoming too easy for her, even though Gerda did put up a good fight, making sure to hide her chocolate treats or put it well out of Elsa’s reach.

Even though Elsa was quite tall for a ten year old, it did help that she could use her ice power to bridge any gap keeping her from her target. Of course things didn’t always run smooth, she had yet to completely control her power and more than once it had been her downfall. While she was mischievous, she was no liar – not that lying was possible when facing either Kai or Gerda… or her parents for that matter… come to think about it lying was just not really possible, her ice would spiked or temperature would drop as soon as she’d try to be deceitful.

She came to an abrupt halt when she came face to face with Kai. 

“Ah, Elsa, just the one I was looking for,” Kai declared. “I just left the ballroom where I…”

Kai didn’t finished his sentence, the shift in the young girl’s face had been brief and subtle, so much so it would have most likely escaped anyone else’s attention. He wasn’t ‘anyone’, he knew how to read Elsa like the back of his hand, every little tell she had, he knew.

He had known that something had happened in the ballroom. He had seen foot prints on two sofas and had guessed that Elsa had used them as trampolines again, but now he understood that those foot prints probably were the tip of an iceberg.

While Elsa had used to have other children around to play with, after the incident that had changed. As a result Elsa had then learnt to entertain herself. Eventually the spark of mischief had returned, engaging the young girl, Kai and Gerda into a battle of will and ingeniousness. Elsa would try to find ways to get away with her antics, in return Kai and Gerda would try to keep tracks of said antics to keep her in line.  

He quickly scrutinized Elsa to find a way to get his suspicions confirmed. Lucky him, he didn’t have to look too far.

“I’m willing to let your latest kitchen heist slide in exchange to the explanation about the marks in the ballroom,” he announced making sure to stay vague, handing her as much rope as possible to hang herself. When he felt her on the verge of protesting, he continued. “Innocence is not well spelled with chocolate smudges on your face.”

Elsa immediately rubbed the back of her hand against her mouth, cursing her inability to resist temptation – not that she could really be blamed for the power of Gerda’s chocolate delicacies was strong.

She held Kai’s gaze for a moment, this was quite a bargain. She knew the penalty for a kitchen heist, Gerda was really strict about eating in between meals and getting in the kitchen without supervision… and, well her pockets were full it wasn’t like she had just taken one or two cakes, she had raided the kitchen meaning that she would most likely end up cleaning the place with a toothbrush – that was one experience she was in no rush to repeat.  

On the other hand what happened in the ballroom was not offering a better alternative as far as punishments go… unless she could sell it well.

Right, all she needed was to find the right angle. Easy peasy.

“I slightly miscalculated the steepness of my ice ramps and didn’t think I’d go as fast so… the shield kind of scrapped the floor when I tried to brake…” she trailed off. “But really the varnish took it all, I mean the wood underneath is fine,” she added in a rush.

There, she had explained while stressing the fact that she hadn’t meant the offense, surely that was ground for leniency.

Kai was used to conceal his emotions behind a mask of indifference. That being said Elsa always managed to come close to change that. He had, on regular basis, to make a conscious effort to keep his eyes from popping out of his skull or let his jaw drop, right now was such an instance.

Elsa was by no mean short on imagination and inventiveness, Kai was well aware of that but Kai was more often than not surprised at the different things the young girl found to entertain herself. If he was honest, there was part of him was a bit proud and impressed, but that was something he would never admit out loud.

“You used the shields as sleds on ice ramps in the ballroom,” he stated just to be certain.

“… yes?” Elsa’s confirmation was tentative. Catching the hint of disbelief in his tone, it only now dawned on her that she most likely could have gotten away with her shield race. “…those weren’t the marks you were alluding to, were they?”

“No, indeed, they were not. On the bright side, you’ll have plenty of time to tell me about the boots marks on the settees while you polish every single shield after dinner,” he grinned.

Elsa closed her eyes and sighed in defeat as her head hung low.

She needed to be more attentive to Kai’s interrogation techniques.

Lesson learnt.

 

**–-oOo–-**

 

Kristoff turned to the soft whistle of Sven, the taller boy was standing in front of one of the classrooms. He joined his friend and they both entered. Hunched into a corner between bookshelves, hugging her knees to her chest was Anna. The two boys flanked one side of the girl each and sat next to her.

Like him and Sven, she was wearing her nice clothes and not a single hair was out of place from her braids, as it always was the case when adults came to visit the orphanage (Mrs Pot always insisted that it was important to make a good impression).

Anna hated wearing those stupid clothes because  a) they were uncomfortable for one, and b) she had to be careful when she wore them (they only had one set of dressing clothes), meaning that she couldn’t do much except sit and read all day (the skinned knee and chin, banded arm and bruises she was harbouring today were tell-tale signs that staying still wasn’t her favourite activity).

She didn’t know why she had to wear those stupid clothes anyway. It was not like any family wanted her. As a general rule the potential parents preferred babies or toddlers. The older you were the less chances you had to be picked. That wasn’t to say that the older kids never found new families, plenty of them did, just not… her… or Kristoff… or Sven. It didn’t matter that they were well dressed or polite or kind or smiling, in the end none of them were ever picked to go to a new home.

She didn’t care anyway.

Truly, she didn’t.

She certainly wasn’t jealous that the other girl, Snow, had barely been there for five months before being adopted by a new family today, when she had been here for five years now.

She didn’t care that the adults only enjoyed talking to her but didn’t want to adopt her because she was too wild, too hyperactive, too clumsy, or too whatever they didn’t like.

She really didn’t care.

And it didn’t feel like a hand was crushing her heart in her chest, and she didn’t feel lonely, and she didn’t feel unworthy of love, and she didn’t feel despair or angry because other kids got picked.

“Fuck them,” Kristoff spat after a long silence.

Anna’s head wiped around to look at her friend, she could feel her eyebrows touching her hairline. They were not allowed to swear (the tanning their behinds had received for breaking that rule was rather still vivid in Anna’s mind, even though she had been smiling afterward thinking about the day’s event).

The blonde boy didn’t care about that right now though and continued. “Fuck them,” he repeated. “We don’t need them,” he added with a firm nod. “We have a place with loads of rooms, we have a big backyard with the coolest oak tree, we have secret passages and the best places to play hide and seek, we have secret stashes of chocolates and candies… and we have a gigantic library and…”

Silence filled the room again as his words trailed off. The list was pretty much complete. “We have everything we need here… so fuck them.”

Anna hung onto his angry words and nodded. “Yeah… fuck them,” she echoed softly.

There was a small grunt coming from Sven that sounded like a curse. Anna felt a gently nudge on her knee, she turned to Sven and the boy grinned taking her hand.

“Yeah, Sven is right,” Kristoff agreed. “And most importantly, we have each other.”

A faint smile tugged at Anna’s lips as she nodded in agreement.

Kristoff was right, it didn’t matter that they we never picked.

It didn’t matter and they didn’t care, it wasn’t like they all wished someone could at least find one thing good about them.

Anna’s face crumpled into a grimace, the sob that had been bubbling in the back of her throat finally broke free, hot tears rolling down her cheeks.

None of the boys said anything, Sven simply tightened his hold on her hand, Kristoff passed his arm around her shoulders, letting her rest her head against his as she cried her heart out.

It didn’t matter and they didn’t care… most of the time anyway.

 

**–-oOo–-**

  

“How was your day?”

Elsa was observing Kai attentively as he was taking apart a heat regulating device. When he was not managing the royal couple’s schedule or attending meetings, Kai supervised the works and sometimes like right now did the repairs himself.

The young girl was fascinated with knowing how things work. She could watch for hours as Kai took things apart and put them back together. 

“Uneventful,” the young girl shrugged. “Tutoring all morning, exercising the afternoon, a bit of reading and drawing.”

“Did you read anything interesting?”

“As a matter of fact yes, one was a long and detailed paper about the different armours, battle suits and their evolution, I’m not done with it yet though. The other was about chess.”

Kai nodded then put down the small monkey wrench he was using, before he even looked for his next tool Elsa was handing it to him. Years of careful observation had created a dynamic between them, when she was younger he’d ask for his tools explaining why he needed them for, but now Elsa could tell on her own.

“Suits and armours… inspiration for your drawings, I presume.”

“Yes, although today I was working on my perspectives.”

Kai took a few seconds to formulate his next statement. “Military related topics seem to draw you in as of late.”

She shrugged. The silence stretched on.

She was forced to attend events now, facing crowds of people, something she hated but she had no choice in the matter because it was part of her future responsibilities. Her parents had been lenient, waiting as long as they could before imposing her to be present at every event they attended. There had been a lengthily discussion about her education, duties and such, the necessity for her to learn how to cope with it all and handle her power.

A few weeks ago she had accompanied her father to meet the troops and watched a training exhibition, she had been impressed and since looked for anything that had to do with the army wanting to know everything there was to know about it.

“It’s interesting,” she replied casually. “According to Father I’m supposed to know all of those things…”

She wasn’t ready to tell more, the exhibition had planted the seed of an idea in the back of her mind and it was germinating steadily. Right now, it seemed foolish and she had no desire to be mocked, but she knew that if she did the necessary searches and learnt everything there was to know on the topic she would be able to make something concrete out of that idea.

Kai nodded, he suspected there was more than the young girl was letting on but he knew better than to push. Elsa would confide in him in due time, she always did.

“You’re learning how to play chess?” he changed topic, although it could be argued that chess could be related to the military.

“Olaf is teaching me.”

Eleanor Mellow had worked in the House of Arendelle, she had arrived six years prior to Kai. The woman was vibrant, always in a good mood, hard worker with a luminous personality. She had fallen in love with a nobleman from a foreign kingdom. Though her feelings were reciprocated by the gentleman one would easily believe that it would be just one more scandalous not so secret affairs, but it turned out not to be the case.

The nobleman not one to be deter by such a thing as cast had wed Eleanor and from their union were born two sons: Olaf and Marshall.

Unfortunately, as fate would have it, the boys’ father passed away when they were still toddlers. Even though her husband had left enough wealth to ensure that she and the boys would live comfortably, Eleanor had preferred returning to work in the House of Arendelle, leaving her husband’s fortune as an heritage for her boys.

Sadly, illness took her, and the boys were left orphans. Gerda, being the godmother of the boys had taken them in.

It had been a relief to Gerda and himself to see Elsa forge a friendship with the two boys, especially after the incident that had ostracised her from the other children. Olaf and Marshall, had stuck around even though Elsa was reluctant to be around people, brushing off every little spill of power as nothing important. Nowadays the three children were almost inseparable and spent as much time as possible together.

“Olaf is an excellent player,” Kai pointed out. It was a small understatement, the boy seemed to have become a grand master only a couple of days after learning how to play.

“He is,” Elsa agreed as she passed another tool to Kai.

They shared a long comfortable silence.

“Did you enjoy your walk?”

“It was pleasant, the park is quite beautiful now that the flowers are coming out.”

“And the one on the ceiling?”

She hiccupped in amusement. “I wasn’t so much walking on it as I was getting the impulsion I needed to…” she trailed off when she finally realized what was happening, but it was too late. She winced pursing her lips to smother a curse while Kai looked at her with a barely there smug grin.

The trick had been smooth as always, Kai’s light and casual tone had dulled her vigilance as a result she had dove right in, forgetting that she had indulged herself with ice ramps in the ballroom.

The problem wasn’t so much the ice ramps as their location. Seeing as Elsa liked to transform the ballroom into winter wonderlands, her parents had put a room at her disposal so she could use her power freely, in counterpart of which she was forbidden to use the ballroom.

While Elsa was very appreciative and made good use of said room, it was small so her ramps couldn’t be as complex or steep as she’d like, therefore from time to time (like today) she’d sneak into the ballroom. She was usually good at covering her tracks though (when she didn’t forget to check the ceiling that is).

“… but I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear the details after dinner when I help you polish the armours…” she added in defeat.

“You know me so well,” Kai didn’t bother hiding his smirk.

Elsa had always been smart and witty, growing up only sharpened those traits making it harder to keep up with her mischievous ways. Nowadays it was about the little things, Kai didn’t mind conceding the war to Elsa, as long as he won some battles. He was ready to bet that the footprints on the ballroom ceiling were probably the smallest offence of the day, but chances were that he wouldn’t be able to outwit the girl to get her to talk about the others.

 

**–-oOo–-**

 

“Anna, what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?”

“I hope it hurt,” the little redhead mumbled petulantly, her anger had not waned in the least since she had been pulled off the two older boys she had fought with and dragged into Mrs Pot’s office.

“Anna!”

“I am _not_ getting in trouble for lying,” the eleven year old persisted. She was not sorry about getting into a fight, or that she had hurt two boys, in fact she only hope that she had hurt them a lot and she certainly wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

“I do not care what is said or done, violence is _never_ the right answer.”

“No, but it was the deserved one,” the eleven year old muttered with a smirk of amusement.

“Enough, Anna!” she was sharply called back again. “You broke Gaston’s nose and almost knocked Clayton’s teeth out, that this nothing to be proud of or laugh about!”

Anna was a lively girl, also much like most of the children living in Blue Haven she was not immune to getting into troubles or mischief. In the six years she had been in the orphanage, Anna’s hyperactive nature had brought her many times in Mrs Pot’s office though it was more often than not for minor offence.

Grace Pot had never been fond of the teenage years of the children under her watch. She wasn’t fool enough to think that Anna’s transition to adulthood would be smooth but now she was starting to dread the upcoming delicate period.

Anna had started to give everybody attitude during the past few months, culminating with today’s debacle. Until today the redhead’s worse offense had been the day she and her two friends had decided to play pirates.

Pretending to be sailors caught up in a storm they had proceeded to yell insanities and curses at each other with gusto, unfortunately for Grace Pot and the rest of Blue Haven’s staff some of the younger children had been around. Only taking in the amusement of their elders the unsuspected youngsters had started chanting the plethora of swear words with even more enthusiasm.

Before any of the adults could comprehend what was happening the choir of obscenities had spread like a wild fire until it was echoing in every corner of the orphanage. Upon finding the source of the chaos Anna and her two acolytes had been rewarded with instant epic spanking after which the trio had been grounded for a solid month.

Re-establishing the no swearing rule and stopping the little ones to think obscenities were funny during the following week had been a very tedious task.

Thinking about the nightmare that week had been could give the older woman a headache, but on a good day (even though she’d never admit it out loud) it’d made her chuckle.

It had been almost a year since that incident, but the girl responsible for it and the redhead facing her today seemed like two different persons. Anna had never been prone to violent outbursts or temper, which made today’s fight all the more worrying.

“What happened?” the headmistress asked after a long silence, her tone gentler.

The young redhead’s face was stuck in a scold and she was looking at the window refusing to meet her gaze. The headmistress let two minutes pass before prompting the young girl again.

“Anna.”

The redhead finally consented to look at the older woman, she was angry but felt a bit guilty upon seeing the disappointment in Mrs Pot’s eyes.

“They were bothering us, I asked them to stop, they didn’t,” she replied sharply with a shrug.

Clayton and Gaston were two years older than her and her two friends. They were always teasing everyone with mean jokes. They more often than not made the younger kids cry.

Anna didn’t like them, they had always made fun of her freckles and sometimes clumsiness. She had shed tears because of them . She had learnt to defend herself even though she had never been physically violent with them.

Once she had caught them<shooting rocks at cats with slingshots laughing when they’d hurt an animal. She had used her own slingshot on them to make them stop. After that day they’d always push her whenever they could and say the worst thing every chance they’d get.

Usually she’d either retort with wit or just ignore them depending on her mood and that would be that. Today however she had seen red. They were mocking Sven’s speech impediment and even when the tall boy was clearly humiliated they relentlessly kept on. Kristoff had tried to intervene but Clayton and Gaston had come with two other boys who were holding Kristoff back.

Anna had demanded that they stopped but they hadn’t listened, instead had started to say all those things to her about how she’d never be adopted and why, why nobody wanted her and nobody ever would, how her parents had died so they wouldn’t have to deal with her any longer.

She had felt hot all over with an incommensurable rage so much so she could barely breathe. She didn’t remember pouncing on them, all she knew was that she wanted them to shut up and to hurt them really bad.

And she had done just that.

The two boys had been surprised and then scared as they tried to defend themselves. The first punch had landed right on Gaston nose and crushed it, the boy had started bawling in pain immediately. Clayton who went to his friend’s rescue had pushed Anna, but the redhead pushed back before raining her fists on him. By the time Bulda and other members of the staff came, Anna was straddling the older boy punching him in the face.

It had taken two person to tear her away from the boy and even when they were holding her back she was trying to wriggle herself out of their grip to go for an encore.

“You’re grounded for the next three months for the fight,” announced Mrs Pot. “And another one because you refused to apologize to Clayton and Gaston. We do not tolerate violence, so I don’t want to see you in my office again for another fight, am I clear?”

“Yes, Mrs Pot.”

“Now go see the nurse so she can make sure you didn’t break anything. Then you’re expected in the kitchen to start with your chores.”

The headmistress watched as the young girl shuffled away. She sighed wearily once the door closed, she needed to keep an eye on the redhead. Grace only hoped that Anna was not engaging herself on a slippery slope of brutal rebellion.

 

**–-oOo–-**

  

Elsa watched the big snowflake she had created as she rolled it gently back and forth between her fingers much like one would roll a coin.

“Elsa.”

At the mention of her name the young girl took hold of the snowflake in her fist to disintegrate it. She then stood up to face Kai.

“They are ready to see you,” he announced before opening the march back from where he came.

They arrived in front of the throne room and Kai entered to announce her. She took a deep breath before walking in to face her parents once Kai came back.

She could speak to her parents at any given time, but today she had a very important request. She felt that asking for a formal meeting would show that the matter she was about to brought up wasn’t taken lightly.

Thaddeus and Magdalena both smiled upon seeing their daughter. They had both been intrigued as to why she had asked to be seen in the throne room since she could talk to them at any moment and would always have their undivided attention, they had concluded that the matter was serious.

The Queen gave Elsa a small nod as an invitation to speak. Elsa breathed in “Ma’am, Sir… I wish to join the army,” she went straight to the point, both the Queen and King stiffened at the announcement but neither said anything giving time to their daughter to make her arguments.

“As a Gifted, I am of age to enlist and as the heir of Arendelle military training is mandatory, furthermore I believe that it would help me greatly to learn how to control my power properly.”

The young girl hadn’t said anything they didn’t know. The mentoring of gifted was an obligation since for some the lack of control of their power could have deadly consequences. The mentoring was usually done with elder gifted as tutors, but there was the possibility to do it by joining the army, gifted were allowed to sign in as early as eleven years old, whereas regular people had to be at least sixteen.

If they had known that Elsa would join the army in the end, as she had pointed out it was a mandatory step in her grooming for the throne, Elsa’s request was nothing more than a reminder their daughter was growing up fast. Like many parents, a part of them wanted their little girl stay just that: little.

Elsa could feel herself becoming nervous in front of her parent’s silence but she forced herself to calm down. “I am ready,” she added firmly lifting her chin up.

Magdalena leant toward her husband to express her opinion on the matter, Thaddeus listened attentively to the words his wife whispered into his ear. He nodded his assent to her demands satisfied they were on the same page, he then looked at his daughter.

“While your arguments are valid we need to know that you truly understand what joining the army entails. Once you join there will be no turning back, you will be pushed to your physical and mental limits. Your training will be even tougher as you are expected to be a leader one day. Also, you will be treated as any recruit, meaning that you’ll live on base for a long period of time.”

Thaddeus marked a pause to let his words sink in. “We’re denying your request today.”

Disappointment filled Elsa but before she could argue her point further to appeal her case, her father spoke again. “Your twelfth birthday is in three months, we want you to use that time to think your decision through once more, if by then you are still willing to enlist, you’ll have our blessing.”

Elsa glanced at her mother who nodded in confirmation. She took a few seconds to calm down, excitement and joy were coursing through her like jolts of electricity. “Yes, Sir.”

Thaddeus, much like his wife, knew that the chances for Elsa to change her mind were slim to nonexistent but the matter was too important to leave any room to doubt or uncertainty.

“Any other matter you wanted to bring to our attention?” the Queen asked.

“No Ma’am.”

“In that case, you’re dismissed.”

Elsa nodded and curtsied. “Ma’am, Sir.”

She calmly exited the room, the beam adorning her lips gave Kai the answer to his question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this took way longer than expected (...understatement, I know), but I figured everything out so the next update will be before next year, promise.
> 
> Thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a plan and I hope my mojo will be kind enough to follow that path. In any case I'm having fun writing this and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
> 
> So ;-)


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